Goblin.tools: simple, single-task tools to help neurodivergent people with tasks

I was going to reply to the same post with similar. If just having a label to apply alleviates the negative emotion, isn't it a placebo?

I think a far far greater number of people experience the exact same problems of focus and distress, and learn to cope effectively in their own deeply personal way. I identify strongly with all the symptoms stated. A label feels useless, or worse - constraining, as it becomes your identity. I still have to drag my ass out of bed, do enough good work everyday next to colleagues who figuratively lap me every day, make a to-do list to remember to buy soap, go without soap for a week, .. etc lol.

I call it being me.

Very well said.

Update: The title of the book should have been “Taking Charge of Adult ADHD.” It’s a great book; my psychiatrist recommended it, and I’m grateful for it. Full of actionable ideas and suggestions.

Barkley opened the door for me to the term 'executive dysfunction'. This better describes my symptoms than the blanket ADHD term that is now oversaturated IMO. Its given me much better anchors to reason with the issues that mess up my day(s), and ive made notable progress since the discovery of his work, at a time when I had been plateauing.

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I am not on meds—my dad is on Adderall but has had some pretty serious side effects so I've been avoiding it for now.

Mostly it's changed my attitude towards myself. I'm naturally a strong perfectionist, which doesn't combine well with ADHD. That has historically led to me constantly beating myself up when I do anything wrong, ruminating over conversations for days to figure out what I should have said differently, and generally being anxious and depressed. After receiving the diagnosis, I've been able to separate "me" from "my ADHD", which has helped me stop kicking myself while I'm down, which in turn has actually increased my ability to stay functional because I don't get into anxious/depressed spirals.

> That's what I'd consider normal. How is ADHD different?

ADHD is different in that sustained focus takes a ton more of energy than for non-ADHD folks - if you're high functioning. And is almost impossible if you're not high-functioning.

Totally agreed that "can't focus on my breath for 10 seconds today" isn't ADHD. "I have repeatably sub-par executive function" very much is, though.

For your language learning example, it's more that somebody can't stay focused on the learning, even if they want to/have to and are aware their focus is sliding away.

There's a reason ADHD diagnosis is technically a process that's a bit involved, you're trying to test for both sub-par function, and for the repeatable part. I'd take self-diagnosis with a bit more salt, especially it's of the "I often forget my car keys" kind.

> I have a feeling that if I were to say "I find it difficult to focus my attention on something for 10 seconds without getting distracted", many would reply "that sounds like ADHD." But this is, in fact, quite normal.

That would be quite normal. A determination of ADHD is made based upon the severity of impact. Everyone gets distracted to some extent, but is it significant enough to be destroying your life, Y/N?

That's the determining factor.

I have ADHD and while you're right that everyone experiences some of these things occasionally, for those with ADHD our emotion regulation system is fundamentally different.

As a kid, you build your identity and coping mechanisms through emotional experiences, but when your emotion engine is 'broken' or works differently, you develop differently.

The intensity, frequency, and impact of these experiences for someone with ADHD is far beyond what neurotypical people experience.

It's not about occasional forgetfulness or distraction - it's about a brain that's structurally and functionally different, affecting every aspect of daily functioning.

Getting diagnosed isn't about finding an excuse, it's about finally understanding why basic things others find easy have always been so much harder for you.

I was diagnosed with ADHD because I scored in the 10th percentile for some totally normal use cases of the human brain. You know, normal “being human” stuff. Evidently I can’t do normal human stuff.

I think getting ADHD isn’t special or interesting at the population level—when you aren’t face to face with it—but it certainly matters to individuals. I wanted to believe I was just being a human, but the reality is that I don’t have a typical human experience. I have a lot of overlap with everyone I know, but most people I meet genuinely can’t understand the experience at all. However, they are often confident that they get it. Meanwhile, they would not qualify as disabled on cognitive assessments.

To me that’s the big difference. People with ADHD often carry around legitimate, often hidden disabilities. Usually more than one.

Except that isn't how neurodivergence works. Yes, everything that the commenter originally posted are things that happen to normal people as well. The difference is in the intensity and duration of these symptoms.

Your comment is overly idealistic about neurodivergent people dealing with their problems. If it was a simple as accepting that our symptoms are normal, don't you think that we would gladly take that as an option? Psychologically, it just isn't a very effective tactic for dealing with our symptoms.

As the parent of a teen with ADHD, I find myself comparing my growing-up experiences and anxieties with his. I'm confident that if I were coming of age today, I would probably have been diagnosed with something because I was firmly a couple standard deviations away from the societal mean.

Because we didn't have as extensive diagnoses or therapies back in the 80s compared to now, I had my own phase of wondering what was wrong with me. There weren't any peer or adult role models available to me that really related to my experiences. As a result, there were some difficult years in there...but also, I had to find my own resiliency and ways of mapping my worldview to other people.

Fast forward 40 years. I am conflicted about which is better: to be left to figure it out on your own, or to have a support system that is (at times) overly biased towards leaning on the diagnosis as the explanation. But I can say with high confidence that at least for the coming-of-age years of my child, I am far more thankful that his experiences are different than mine.

"Being a human" is grossly inadequate as a lowest common denominator definition of the needs and experiences of children. Even as broadly discussed as it is, it's still only ~11% of US children and that's still a challenging hill to climb if their peer culture doesn't provide some sort of explanation or incentives for understanding each other.

If ADHD-oriented media and discussions provide neurodivergent adults a means to work through decades of internalized shame and anxiety, why get in the way of that?

On the one hand, it's true that these things are very important. I (as another diagnosed with ADHD) definitely do worst when I don't get proper nutrients.

But it's very, very important to remember and understand that these things don't make it go away.

I'm not saying you're suggesting that doing these things will make ADHD go away—but your comment is ambiguous as to whether that's where you're going with it, and there's definitely a lot of people who don't really believe that ADHD is a "real" disorder, many of whom give advice just like yours and end with something like "...and if you do all of this right, you'll be perfectly normal!"

So I want to both heartily endorse your recommendations (both the general "eat well," and these specific items), and also caution strongly against expecting miracle results.

Further, asking adhd folk to "pay careful attention" is like asking a paraplegic to mind where he steps. Just FYI.

I was referred to a school counselor in high school because I couldn't sit still, my behavior was inconsistent and I had a hard time focusing.

If that person had caught it, and referred me on to get an ADHD assessment, I would be miles better off.

Instead he gave me exactly the advice you just did, and it achieved nothing. Guy actually owned the whole food / wellness / woo store he referred me to which makes it worse.

Now I have my medication I look back on shit like this with absolute scorn. I know you probably intend the advice in good faith but its absolutely not a replacement for medicine.

Imagine if someone had a broken arm and you told them to focus on their calcium intake. I mean, yeah, for sure, but it's kind of primarily important to put the arm in a sling before we discuss the finer points of mineral uptake efficiency. This may not be your intention but this post reeks of crunchy granola holistic fluff woo.

I think what's incredibly important to remember is that ADHD is not a binary thing. It's not even a single spectrum.

It's a cluster of executive-function-related symptoms, any number of which a given person with the disorder can have a little, a lot, or even not at all. (I forget what all of them are offhand, but I have about a half-dozen of them in noticeable amounts, and several others that seriously debilitate many people with ADHD I've never had problems with.)

So while you may be able to "[not] think about it...just keep working hard...and do great things regardless", that's guaranteed not to be true of everyone with ADHD.

The worst advice anyone with ADHD can give someone else with it is "just do exactly what I did, and you'll never have problems again". That goes triple when "what you did" is ignore it.

The best advice I know of is to learn and understand what having ADHD means to you. Then use that knowledge to figure out how best to mitigate the problems it causes. For some, that will be medication. For others (like me), it may mean finding specific interventions for individual symptoms, and learning to live with some of the others.

I disagree with that assessment. I have autism, which is much more dysfunctional than ADHD in statistical terms, and I also saw a dramatic mental health improvement when I disengaged from popular autism culture. It's become a space that implicitly preaches helplessness and reacts to notions of personal accountability (i.e. receiving behavioral therapy) with hostility.

Somewhere along the way, the mission moved away from the aspirational culture of identifying problem areas and addressing them, to a more stagnant culture that only goes so far as to validate your present behavior and mindset. It feels good and positive on the surface, but it lacks productivity over the long term.

I think its unknowable, but I definitely read 30% expected undiagnosed in the population.

Here is a reputable source that claims 25%

https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/mediaroom/pressreleaselisting/...

neurotypes exist in an n-dimensional space with loose clusterings, making binary attributes at best vague and clumsy.

i hope we move away from pathologizing and toward making social and economic structures adaptive for people that are currently challenged by them, and likewise find better ways for people to adapt their lives to fit how their minds work

We as a society seem to enjoy doing that.

Half of the population are provably on a different circadian rhythm than the other half, but we force everyone to function only one way.

There’s a dozen more examples, related to psychiatry and medicine.

Not necessarily pathologize – just structure society in a way that doesn't quite work for them (me included.)

So if 30% of people develop high blood pressure should be pretend that doesn't exist anymore as well?

Boy, the unsubstantiated claims in this thread are really ramping up. Who's the 'they' in this case? You saw a person gatekeeping something one time so now it's some kind of problem to discuss real symptoms that impact people's lives in a very tangible way?

Let's start with some simple basics:

I need an integrated app, not a website, not a standalone app. It must seemlessly integrate into Android. A webinterace is okay for maintaining purposes. But the app itself must be an integral part of my smartphone. Visible in my taskbar and stuff like need. Without any detours.

Something that integrates with Outlook/Gmail. Why? That helps to keep information synchronized. I need synchronized information, not the 12th app that offers me to help my organizing my day, while infact it's adding up another item to my mind-pile.

Of course it must be simple. Not a fancy interface. Not too much UI elements. No bling-bling.

And one feature I like specifically: A reminder, that tells me how many days/hours/weeks/months I am overdue for recurring tasks. Like a dynamic todo list where I can uncheck items. Let's say the task is "Watering Plants", every 2 days. I must uncheck this item, otherwise it would increase the amount of days its overdue.

Pedantry welcome :-) I have always viewed the semicolon as a creative choice, and the comma as a technical requirement; hence, my reply.