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Several months ago I reached out to an ADHD coach to help me with a problem that has plagued me from day one: the problem of time management. In my younger days, time management was never an issue. Youthful vigor made it possible to work insane hours. Twenty years ago I worked thirty-three hours a week as a movie projectionist (Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday eleven hours each day), I taught two courses in sociology (Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings) and I was a full-time graduate student (Monday and Wednesday afternoons and evenings). I was able to keep it all together by simply working long hours. I’m willing to do that again. I’m willing to put in long hours in order to succeed. However, my body won’t let me do that anymore. If I’m up till 2:00AM, I feel groggy for several days. Further, I can no longer do the mental gymnastics that’s needed to keep it all going. I hate to admit this but time is catching up with my body and brain. Putting in more hours to compensate for my lack of time management actually decreases the amount, and quality, of the work I do. But there are still so many things I want to accomplish in life and if I expect to see at least some of them come to fruition, I must tackle my time management problems.

But I’m afraid to do it.

I’m afraid to learn that I don’t have the time to accomplish everything that I want to accomplish.

I’m afraid to learn that I must make choices that impose limits.

I’m afraid to learn that by choosing X, I have eliminated the possibility of ever choosing Y.

But to do nothing, to not make choices, is to languish.

But to make choices is to experience anguish over choices not made, even though I may desperately yearn to make those other choices.

I now understand the appeal of reincarnation.

If I believed in reincarnation I could focus on a few things in this life and, in my next life, I could do those other things that I still want to do.

But I don’t believe in reincarnation.

So I have no choice but to learn how to make hard choices.

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• I like tomatoes. The doppelganger tomatoes sold in the supermarket are usually mushy inside and the taste is too strong. Homegrown tomatoes, by contrast, have a nice firm pulp, a delicate flavor and a paper-thin skin.
• A cucumber is full of moisture and smells wonderful. I learned this when I peeled my first home-grown cucumber. Though it was two feet away from my nose, it had a wonderful aroma. It was firm, moist and was delicious enough to be eaten raw. Speaking of moist, when I first grew Bok Choy I would break off a stalk and the water would LITERALLY be dripping out!
• Unlike my damned lawn which turns brown if you forget to water it for a week or two, the vegetables will come back to life even if they have been neglected. Of course, you can’t go too long without watering them but vegetables will, at least, perk up again after some time. A lawn, on the other hand, requires more care and maintenance than an infant in diapers. I HATE LAWNS!
• The little kid in me is amazed by the whole growing process. I start with a tiny little seed that turns into a puny little plant which turns into a large plant that I eventually turn into a meal. Absolutely amazing that it really works!¹

Seedlings - Red Sail Lettuce

Planted on May 5, 2010

Cucumbers planted on May 5, 2010

Tomatoes and Lettuce on June 15, 2010. (Tomatoes on left; Red Sail lettuce on the right.)

Cucumbers climbing and climbing - June 15, 2010

Plum Tomatoes on June 15, 2010...just a few short weeks away from harvest time.

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• Notes On Starting A Vegetable Garden (apartmenttherapy.com)
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Postscript

for about five years: After rereading this post for the 10th time (I read them again and again, making minor editing “tweaks” before making them live), I realized that I use the phrase “for about five years” as a sort of literary shorthand, analogous to the biblical “for forty days and forty nights,” which is not meant literally but is simply meant to indicate that a long time has passed. I use this phrase when I tell people that I stopped smoking. I can’t really tell you how many years ago I stopped but I believe it is about five years. That seems to be the edge of my ADHD time-memory horizon.  Ask me what happened ten years ago and, well, I have a hazy recollection and there are many days, months and years that are simply blank. There is something very haunting about this especially when I look at old pictures of myself and I cannot mentally draw a connection between the person captured in that photo and the person who is now staring at that photo and writing this post. It is  not simply that there are gaps in the memory but that there is no memory of it all. Intellectually I know that it is me in the photo. Intellectually I know that some event was captured by the photo. But I do not feel connected to “that” person. It is, to a degree, somewhat like having a leg that does not belong to you. This was described by Oliver Sacks in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. He describes a patient who wakes up in the morning, sees a leg in the bed and, believing that the leg is not his but belongs to someone else, throws it out of the bed. Of course, the rest of his body follows with it which astounds him when it happens. I know that that person in the photo is me and I look at it with some recognition of that fact yet, it does not feel like it is me.

the little kid in me: I don’t know if this is truly an ADHD trait though I suspect it is. Adult ADHDers (I’m really referring to those who were diagnosed late in life) often view the world of Adult non-ADHDers with a certain level of amazement. They are amazed that these “others” are able to accomplish so much in life, from paying bills on time to amassing a sizable savings account, and they (ADHDers) wonder, how the heck do they do that? In a number of respects, this how do they do that intellectual stance carries over into many things, such as, how the heck do the little seeds become big plants? or how does action at a distance REALLY work?² Currently my how the heck do they do that curiosity is focused on the problem of consciousness, namely, how does it (how CAN it!) work?

1. Some of you may think that something this amazing must be the result of Intelligent Design. If there really is an Intelligent Designer, then how come we have Republicans? However, it is possible, as Borges once surmised, that everything we see is really the creation of an infant deity who, having realized what a mistake he made, had decided to abandon the whole project. [Note to the reader: While searching for the source of this "infant deity" concept (I knew that I had encountered it while reading Borges), I discovered that Borges was actually quoting David Hume. "it may be far more reasonable to conclude that the world is 'the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance' " See: Does God Exist: David Hume's Answer To An Unanswerable Question See also: The Analytical Language of John Wilkins by Borges. It is in this essay that Borges quotes Hume and, in addition, it is where we find the definition of "animals" which was found in the (fictitious) Chinese encyclopedia 'The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. Foucault's The Order of Things was inspired by this "definition" of animals. I used this definition as a model for my own definition of ADHD in this post. See, specifically, the three "definitions" of ADHD.  ]
2. Action at a distance is, of course, gravity.

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In all fictions, each time a man meets diverse alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the work of the virtually impossible-to-disentangle Ts’ui Pen, he chooses — simultaneously — all of them. He creates, thereby, ‘several futures,’ several times, which themselves also proliferate and fork. That is the explanation of the novel’s contradictions. Fang, let us say, has a secret; a stranger knocks at his door; Fang decides to kill him. Naturally, there are various possible outcomes — Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they can both live, they can both be killed, and so on. In Ts’ui Pen’s novel, all the outcomes in fact occur; each is the starting point for further bifurcations. Once in a while, the paths of that labyrinth converge: for example, you come to this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another my friend.
- “The Garden of Forking Paths,” from Collected Fictions: Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley. Penguin Books: 1998.

A Definition Of The Word “Understanding”: To understand something means to know the significance of the object of understanding, to be familiar with it, to accept it as true.¹ But to truly understand something, which is the sense that I am most concerned with in this post, is to have an understanding that alters ones actions because those actions are based on that understanding. This “understanding” shapes you forever. All of your actions are done because of or in spite of this understanding.

The problem of ADHD is the inability to conceptualize — and internalize — time and thereby be able structure one’s life based on that conception of time.² At best, ADHDers can understand infinitesimally small pieces of time – namely, the-now. Yet even these infinitesimal time fragments can be obliterated into nonexistence by the ADHD storms of frenetic mental/physical activity. The holy grail for the ADHDer is to reduce the frequency of these storms. Within a fabricated calmness an ADHDer can begin to see and understand time. An ADHDer can then construct a life based on this understanding of how the-nows are related to the-near-term future — the soon-to-be-now — and the-long-term future even though that future can be weeks, months, or years away. Eventually the ADHDer understands that the long-term-future will become the near-term future and will become the-now.

I have achieved this ability to understand and “see” time. More of my actions in the-now are based on my understanding of the interrelationship between the-now, the near-term and the long-term future. I see actions as threaded together in time and across time.³ The acts that occur in the-now are no longer seen as discrete, isolated acts but as acts that can have an effect in the yet-to-be-seen future. This new understanding, this visualization of action across time and space has opened a new realm of thought and vision. I have gone from extreme mental nearsightedness to 20/20 mental vision. I see things I just did not see before. But this new vision has come at a price.

Before “the cure”⁴ I did not truly understand the linkages between the-now and the various futures. I could not easily alter my current behavior because it was based on a poorly developed understanding of time.⁵ I now see it, feel it, understand it. Current action is altered based on a palpably real, future possibility.⁶ My actions are not subject, as much as they once were, to the vagaries of the ADHD storms.⁷  They are more focused, more directed. But, as a consequence of this change, something fundamental has changed. Having arrived at the ADHDer’s “promised land” of internalized time, daily life has a different feel to it, a different texture. I am going through the “expected” motions of life, following a particular path — created by my choices and actions —  towards an imagined endpoint. The ADHDers illusion (delusion) of an infinite series of choices and do-overs is fading. I do not have the luxury, as in the writings of Ts’ui Pen, to choose all of the paths simultaneously.

This new understanding, this new realization, has created an internal tension. I want to return to that pre-cure state. I want to live again in the infinitesimal nows with the illusion of infinite do-overs, of being able to choose all paths simultaneously. There was a zest, a drive, a vibrancy that was fueled by a never ending swirl of ADHD storms. It was exhilarating, exhausting and chaotic.  Yet, I also want to remain in the post-cure state. It is calmer, more predictable. The zest, the drive, the vibrancy to life that characterized the pre-cure state is still there. It is not gone. But it has changed. It is no longer fueled by a string of ADHD storms. Its source of energy is a new understanding of time and action.

I wonder what my life will be like in the coming decades. I expect it to be an interesting journey.

The non-ADHDer may be puzzled by some of the ideas alluded to in this post. The following links may be of some help here.

• The Tyranny of Now
• The A.D.D.er Can Not Understand Life Because the A.D.D.er Can Not Understand Time
• Time Horizons
• The Broken Escapement – An A.D.D. Metaphor

1. You CAN accept something as true when it is false. The statement “two plus two equals five” is false which, we know, is true, that is, it is a true statement.
2. This is the essence of Barkley’s theory of ADHD.
3. For non-ADHDers, it is not a revelation to learn that life is a series of actions in and across time and space. However, non-ADHDers “naturally” internalize this concept and conduct their lives accordingly. For ADHDers, this concept is never internalized and the struggle becomes learning how to internalize it to whatever degree is possible.
4. The “cure” for me consists of medication, therapy, exercise and personal reflection.
5. Though I was able to alter my behavior based on some imagined “future,” it was only possible with gargantuan effort and within the tornado of forces that comprise the ADHD mind. It was done, in large measure, as a means of relieving the tornado’s pressure — which may have been in the form of a project deadline, for example — in order to be able to rapidly get back to the point where the pressure was gone. It was not necessarily for an imagined future, per se, but for a very near-term future that was pressure-free. It was always done to relieve “the pain.” When the perceived pain was gone, the activity stopped.
6. When I do not alter my actions as I should, the guilt eats away at me.
7. Admittedly there are still ADHD storms that temporarily nullify the actions and pull me back into the infinitesimal nows. But these storms are less frequent, less dominant.

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1. The irony, here, is you find out about Internet Addiction, through…er…um…the Internet. If you look at the online test for addiction provided by this website, so many of the questions seem to apply to A.D.D.ers and in so many other contexts than the use of the Internet. While there can be some endless debate (on the Internet, of course) as to whether Internet Addiction actually exists, a larger problem is one of terminology, as pointed out here.  Pathological Computer Use, defined as “excessive computer use, withdrawal, [...] serious negative repercussions due to excessive computer use” is something that, I’m sure, a number of you reading this (on the Internet, of course) may be able to relate to. But what is difficult to wrap our heads around is the terminology. Words such as “pathological” or “addiction” carry so many layers of meaning and associations that their juxtaposition with the words “computer” or “internet” seems, well, laughable. (I can certainly imagine a time when someone will tell us that our Internet Addiction is really a gift waiting to be unwrapped.) Imagine if someone said you had PAU – Pathological Automobile Use – defined as excessive driving time, excessive speeding, excessive attention to your automobile to the exclusion of others (wait…I’ve heard of that last one…it’s called “The Auto Show”!!!). You would, of course, laugh. Yet some of us may know people that live and breath cars (they may go by the name of NASCAR fan, automobile restorer, etc.). We don’t see this as a pathology. However, none of this should be interpreted as minimizing the effects of this “Internet addiction” because we know people who have such an addiction (in fact…it may be you). However, someone better come up with some better terminology.

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If time and life are so entwined, so ontologically inseparable that the existence of one requires the existence of the other and, furthermore, if the fundamental problem of A.D.D. is an inability to understand time, then the only conclusion is that the A.D.D.er can not understand life. [Read More]

This post originally appeared in December 2007.

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Isn’t the problem of A.D.D. really a problem of a broken escapement? The A.D.D. mind is that gear and, with a broken escapement, there is nothing to regulate its spinning. Sometimes the escapement is engaged, sometimes not. But it is the absence of this regularity that makes an A.D.D.er an A.D.D.er. It is why an A.D.D.er cannot sleep (their clock does not know when to tell them to stop); it is why an A.D.D.er cannot (easily) complete a task on time (they have no internal clock); it is why an A.D.D.er does not understand how small (positive) actions over a long period of time can a have a large (positive) impact in the future. It’s interesting that the lack of such a simple mechanism – an “internal watch movement”; the biological equivalent of an escapement – is the key that separates/differentiates the A.D.D.er from non-A.D.D.ers.

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See: Helping ADHD Children Master Time

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It's now only two weeks shy of a full year that I've been in my new job. The job has forced me to, once again, confront myself and the wreckage of my life.³ It has also forced me to search for a balance between the "interior life" of the A.D.D. mind and the external non-A.D.D. world. Interestingly, the responsibilities of the job, which entails both short and long-term projects, has enhanced my ability to visualize time.  Though still a struggle, I am able to visualize short and long time-horizons.⁴

This ability to visualize time makes everything possible. I can now "see" how to get from here to there. I can see how my actions in the present will move me, almost imperceptibly (it is so small as to be microscopic) towards the long term goal that I visualize. Admittedly a large injection of hope – the A.D.D.ers drug of choice – is required to help me in this process. Since the future is not knowable in the present, hope eases the pain of the sometimes intolerable, mundane, but necessary activities of the present that are the requirements of reaching that goal that exists at the end of that long time-horizon. I can survive the present because I know (hope?) that there will be a better future.⁵

I wish I had gotten this job years ago. The beneficial effect of being able to visual time would have been solidified by now.⁶ The daily mental struggles (mental gymnastics, really) would be behind me. I would be approaching A.D.D. normalcy.⁷ But, in the same way that we cannot choose when to be born, we cannot truly know – until after it has occurred – that some particular action, like closing one's business and getting a regular job, will have a profound and beneficial effect.

My wife, the non-A.D.D.er, predicted this exact outcome.

1. Obvious, at least to two A.D.D.ers. I'm one of them and my first business partner, a fellow A.D.D.er, was the other.
2. The damage caused to my family is so great that its effects will be felt in future generations of my family.
3. See my examination of the wreckage of life in Know Thyself. What is even more sobering, and depressing, is the wreckage I have caused in the lives of my wife and kids.
4. Visualizing long time-horizons still remains the consummate challenge for the A.D.D.er. See The Tyranny of Now. My "collection" of writings on time can be found here.
5. It is not possible to write this without commenting on the current economic crisis. Whatever may be the cause of the crisis and whatever may be the resulting financial loss, the most devastating loss is hope since it is hope that makes it possible to sacrifice in the present for a better future.
6. To be more accurate, partially solidified,  since for an A.D.D.er many mental structures that are thought to be solid are just a slow moving liquid…meaning they can potentially be in movement again (they return to a fast moving liquid) or they can evaporate (become a gas).
7. This concept of A.D.D. normalcy is, one might say, asymptotic in nature (think calculus, here). The A.D.D.er gets infinitely closer to "normalcy" but never reaches it. Normalcy always eludes the A.D.D.er. The A.D.D.er is always in a state of Becoming normal but is never in a state of Being normal. To put it another way, the train of normalcy is always approaching the station but it never arrives.

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The non-A.D.D. world marches forward and leaves you further and further behind. Every day you re-imagine the trajectories of your life (what if I married that person instead of the one I am married to now? what if I take that job instead of the one I have now? what if I suddenly win the state lottery?) Your life remains mired in “becoming” but never quite “being.” You never quite arrive at a whole, consistent “you.”

And then one day you find you are fifty years old. Your children are older and, somehow, more dependent on you than when they were small. The financial burdens have grown as you are faced with college tuition and, gasp, the unthinkable, YOUR possible retirement. But at age fifty you now see things you did not see before. You now see the trajectories that are closed off. Though fantasies remain, the biggest fantasy of all, the possibility of following a different life trajectory, is basically over. Yes, you can get divorced and marry that attractive young woman who works in your office but, let’s be realistic. Can you really do that? And even if you could (and DID!) what does that really mean? You will not be a thirty year old with a young woman…you will be an old man with a thirty year old. You cannot relive being thirty and having a different wife. You cannot relive those moments. They are gone. They cannot be recaptured. They cannot be replayed. Unlike in childhood, in real life there is no “do over.” There is only “do once.” Maybe, if you are lucky, “do twice” but at some point you are faced with “never be able to do again.” And while “never be able to do again” may seem like the death of an A.D.D.er, it is, at the same time, liberating because you can now ignore the lure of the path you might have taken. Your focus becomes sharper. You are still A.D.D. but the fantasies lessen as reality and, yes, mortality, becomes a very real thought. Your Cassandra-like qualities sharpen and life becomes a very serious pursuit.

I had thought that becoming fifty years old would be the most depressing event of my life. As an A.D.D.er, it is, interestingly, one of the happier moments of my life. Part of that happiness is a result of a shortened time horizon. I am not looking at a career that stretches for the next forty years of my life. Instead, I am looking at a much more manageable ten or fifteen years. This is a time horizon that I can see, that I can plan for, that I can trace its likely trajectory. It is not an abyss of empty time but a usable and manageable block of time. It is a slice of calmness and sanity which too often eludes the A.D.D.er. If I could freeze time I would not want to be thirty years old again or eighteen years old. I much prefer the calmness and intellectual acuity that comes with being an older A.D.D.er.

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