> In programming/math skills it may not be about skills themselves - but rather that meds are what makes it possible for me to apply them consistently for anything that isn't a personal hobby project with no external expectations.
Exactly, application of skills is often more important than skill level, and that's what a lot of people with ADHD struggle with. I do not get a sense of reward or accomplishment when I finish tasks, or at least I get very, very little of that feeling of pride. So give me something I'm intrinsically motivated at in the moment, and everything else shuts down and I can focus on it entirely. Once that intrinsic motivation goes away, difficult jumps up so much and pretty much the only motivator that consistently worked to cut through that was stress.
I was actually worried about losing some effectiveness at hyperfocusing when I started ritalin (which was not something I needed to be concerned about, but whatever), and the thing that got me over that was thinking, "hey, you could actually be quite a bit worse at programming, and if the benefit you got from that was that you actually finished any of your projects, you would still be way more productive and produce much better work overall."
People honestly overestimate the importance of skill. Even if ritalin did lower my programming skills (which it doesn't), not being able to do boring things is way more limiting than not being able to produce exceptional work all the time.
> I usually describe this as Ritalin making me "sticky" - as in, I'll happily continue doing whatever it is I'm doing when on it, whether it's productive work or commenting on HN.
This is another point in favor of "these drugs affect different people differently and it's not really useful to generalize too much."
I don't see this effect at all. My experience with ritalin is that it makes my executive dysfunction goes down but it has little to no impact on my distractability or how focused I am. I jump between tasks exactly the same, I still hyperfixate on things, I still have a hard time sticking to tasks that are unenjoyable -- it's just easier for me to respond to external stimuli I set up (timers, lists, etc) that help to keep me more on track. I know other people have very different experiences.
My feeling is that people sometimes look at downstream behavioral changes and they want to draw an exact cause and effect to "the drug makes you do X, it makes you worse at Y." No, the drug affects my dopamine reuptake receptors and other specific parts of my brain chemistry. Because of my experiences in life and because of how my brain has adapted to having bad regulation of those chemicals and because of the pathways it's formed to help it adapt to that bad regulation, that leads to individualized reactions/behavioral changes. But motivation and focus are extremely complicated. If I think of my brain like a car, tuning or altering one part of the engine so I can drive it better is not going to make it drive identically to everyone else's car, and changing the same part in two different cars that are tuned differently might have different effects on how the cars feel to drive.
Exactly, application of skills is often more important than skill level, and that's what a lot of people with ADHD struggle with. I do not get a sense of reward or accomplishment when I finish tasks, or at least I get very, very little of that feeling of pride. So give me something I'm intrinsically motivated at in the moment, and everything else shuts down and I can focus on it entirely. Once that intrinsic motivation goes away, difficult jumps up so much and pretty much the only motivator that consistently worked to cut through that was stress.
I was actually worried about losing some effectiveness at hyperfocusing when I started ritalin (which was not something I needed to be concerned about, but whatever), and the thing that got me over that was thinking, "hey, you could actually be quite a bit worse at programming, and if the benefit you got from that was that you actually finished any of your projects, you would still be way more productive and produce much better work overall."
People honestly overestimate the importance of skill. Even if ritalin did lower my programming skills (which it doesn't), not being able to do boring things is way more limiting than not being able to produce exceptional work all the time.
> I usually describe this as Ritalin making me "sticky" - as in, I'll happily continue doing whatever it is I'm doing when on it, whether it's productive work or commenting on HN.
This is another point in favor of "these drugs affect different people differently and it's not really useful to generalize too much."
I don't see this effect at all. My experience with ritalin is that it makes my executive dysfunction goes down but it has little to no impact on my distractability or how focused I am. I jump between tasks exactly the same, I still hyperfixate on things, I still have a hard time sticking to tasks that are unenjoyable -- it's just easier for me to respond to external stimuli I set up (timers, lists, etc) that help to keep me more on track. I know other people have very different experiences.
My feeling is that people sometimes look at downstream behavioral changes and they want to draw an exact cause and effect to "the drug makes you do X, it makes you worse at Y." No, the drug affects my dopamine reuptake receptors and other specific parts of my brain chemistry. Because of my experiences in life and because of how my brain has adapted to having bad regulation of those chemicals and because of the pathways it's formed to help it adapt to that bad regulation, that leads to individualized reactions/behavioral changes. But motivation and focus are extremely complicated. If I think of my brain like a car, tuning or altering one part of the engine so I can drive it better is not going to make it drive identically to everyone else's car, and changing the same part in two different cars that are tuned differently might have different effects on how the cars feel to drive.