Now if I could only understand my cell phone bill…well…that would be a real accomplishment!

Your words: “The A.D.D.er has enormous difficulty understanding that life is a linear progression that starts with a birth and ends with a death. The A.D.D.er is trapped in an infinity of “nows” and can not, except with great difficulty and much artifice, comprehend the linear nature of life. It is only based on observation of “the past” and continual repetition of the past” …

There are days when I feel like I have escaped from the “trap”. But I have days that I feel “trapped”. The days I feel “trapped” are the most important because I will search and take a look at my past mistakes. Then I can see and learn from them.

I should probably have put a ? mark on that, because I am still trying to learn how to understand life and time.

To tackle much larger tasks, such as a very large project that takes several months to complete, requires an understanding of time that spans months…not small chunks of time such as minutes. It also requires that I understand that the minutes spent at it on this day, Jan. 30, 2011, will have an effect on the completion of the project which may be, say, May 30, 2011. But wait…there’s more. What if I want to plan for my retirement which may be, not a few months away, but twenty years from now? This is a different, much longer, time horizon and so I need to understand how the minutes spent “now” tie into events that I can’t really fathom but simply know will occur. It also means that I need to alter my current behavior in light of that far off, nebulous life event.

So…the problem that ADHDers encounter is that they are ALWAYS caught in “the now,” in the tiny time slices and have great difficulty “escaping,” in a sense, the allure of “the now” and its demands so that their behavior right at this moment can be modified in light of the future. They have a problem understanding the flow and connection of events over time. Think of the child who has to wait till Christmas to get a toy they desperately want. It’s a terribly frustrating position to be in but it is something that must be endured. Now imagine the ADHD adult who desperately wants to buy a particular toy (a new computer; a new car…etc.) but must decide between purchasing that toy now OR waiting a year (or several years) before making that purchase or, in some cases, putting that money into a retirement account and NEVER making that purchase. It is that type of decision, one that requires altering one’s current behavior right now (in the present) and understanding how that altered current behavior in the present will have an effect which may be years away. This is a very difficult thing for the majority of ADHDers to grasp.

See notebook page 3 of this post for another explanation and a picture (it’s worth a thousand words…btw). http://jeffsaddmind.com/pages-from-my-notebook-adult-adhd-reflections-on-life-and-adhd-4256.htm

The time required to “understand life” is not just the time to be somewhere at a designated time. It is really the long term time horizons, the one where you do things in-the-now based on some future time that is years or decades away. It’s that ability to see these long horizons of time and to modify one’s actions as a result of that conception, that often alludes ADHDers. The best example is saving money for one’s retirement which may be decades away. That retirement is difficult to visualize, especially when you are young, yet non-ADHDers have a comparatively easier time handling such long time horizons whereas we are often consumed with what is going on right now and/or in the very short term. If we can “see” a few months out and modify our actions accordingly, we’re in good shape. But to see decades, well, we have great difficulty with that.

-sent via blackberry

This was always a grave problem for me when I lived in California. Then I moved to New Orleans where the city functions in it’s own semi-third world reality. Here, they call it New Orleans time, and under its rules I am actually early sometimes!!

I too wish there was an “off” button for ADHD but, unfortunately, there isn’t. And there are days when I just can’t stand it that I am ADHD. (I have a little poem called “Not A.D.D.” on this page: http://jeffsaddmind.com/about ) When I’m fed up with it. I’m having fewer of those days..but…they still occur. Those are the days when I think, “Ok…not going to get much work done today.”

Here’s the secret on how to be focused. You ready? Don’t be focused. Not joking (sorta). I have one hundred posts in draft format. Many will get deleted and never see the light of day. Others may get combined into another post which eventually goes live. There are days when I can sit and write and write and write…and other days when I cannot. So what I really do is work on a post for a bit…take a break…come back to it at another time…basically let my natural rhythms take control. From the outside it may seem like I’m doing this daily but, in fact, I may write several posts at once and just schedule them to appear on various days. In fact, the next four ADHD-related posts have already been written. So…focus is more a matter of going back to it again and again over a period of time as opposed to sitting in a seat for 8 hours at a clip. I’m focused, sort of…but in only little bits of time.

Don’t worry…your inner optimist will make an appearance. Excercise and vitamins may help the optimist to come out.

The speed of light. I thought about this a few nights ago while sitting on my porch after sundown and gazing at the stars……Someone told me, or I learned this in elementry school, but I can’t stop thinking about this every night when I go out on the porch after sundown(every night) by myself, to relax(I try to anyway.. lol…relax).

When I see the light of a star, I assume that I see the star as it exists at this moment. But in reality, that star may have exploded or fizzeld out many yrs ago, and I am just seeing the light of what happened many yrs ago.

This thought could many subjects about my own ADD way of dealing(or not sometimes) with it. Do you see any relevence to ADD in this way of thinking?

Scott.