This could be overgeneralising a bit... but I see a lot of people with ADHD (on- and offline) who tend to make it an essential part of their identity. I realise it's a very impactful thing to have to deal with (I have ADHD too) but I feel like a lot of the time it's brought up for no real reason. E.g. you started daydreaming when reading a book? Forgot something to do when you walked through a doorway? Got angry? You lost track of what you were thinking about? Must be the ADHD. There are YouTube channels whose whole gimmick is that they're run by and for people with ADHD. And guess what kind of content you'll see there: "Why cooking with ADHD is hell", "How ADHD can make you lie", "Music for people with ADHD". What happened to "music for concentration"? HN is a place where I see this play out a lot.

I think it's particularly common to see that with people who discover their ADHD in adulthood, and there are a lot of us now that awareness has been raised in recent years.

I went my whole life thinking that I was broken. I had intense anxiety surrounding social interaction, was horribly depressed, got terrible grades through high school, and just generally did not enjoy most of life. I eventually learned how to cope and function normally to an outside observer, but still would go through cycles of intense anxiety and depression that I didn't know how to explain.

A few years ago I finally was diagnosed with ADHD and suddenly everything clicked. My anxiety, my depression, my grades, my intense hyperfocus on one thing at a time but also inability to keep consistently focused on one thing for more than a few weeks. All of that suddenly made sense, and there were people in the world who knew exactly how I felt. And the thing is, the anxiety and depression have largely gone away. Now that I know what's going on inside my brain I don't have to beat myself up about it, instead I can learn from and lean on hundreds of thousands of other people who have to cope with the same thing.

So yeah, today I will often notice "oh, that's an ADHD thing" at random times in my life. But it's not so much that it's an essential part of my identity as it is that it's enormously comforting to finally have an explanation for all of the weird quirks that I have, and it's a huge relief to have a community of people who experience the same things that I do. When I say "that's my ADHD", it's me reminding myself that I am not broken, just different, and different is okay.

To be honest, I thought exactly like you for years. I still benefit from society choosing to label me with something, and that I do not choose to fight. For a while my diagnoses provided so many explanations to my problems and I could live with new purpose.

But a while later, I found it was not enough. I hadn't reached "true happiness" or at least whatever I can call my current state of being. I took a different path, shed all my labels, self-prescribed or otherwise, and am happier than I was before.

I still think I am "different" and have quirks, etc. So in practice, not a whole lot different than before. I just don't use the labels to describe these differences that others might use instead.

I think this only emphasizes that one approach does not necessarily apply when generalized to all people. In my case it only served as one step towards a greater solution, and hopefully even more effective solutions I can build on top of that later.

The same goes for heightened awareness for ADHD. More knowledge can be a blessing (as in your case). At the same time, the population such awareness can serve is shaped like a very complex blob, the form of which nobody truly knows, but I believe some clinicians/promoters see the "blast radius" of promoting awareness as a perfectly round circle overlaid directly onto the population.

My experience also made me realize what one can term "ADHD" may change with overarching cultural shifts or personal growth. I think ADHD should be seen closer to a symptom of a constellation of any number of potentially unrelated causes than a "disorder" to be focused on alone. Unfortunately the established terminology seems to have won out there.

The way we see health conditions and the words we choose to describe them can have profound effects on our understanding of ourselves.

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.

> If just having a label to apply alleviates the negative emotion, isn't it a placebo?

You could use the exact same line of reasoning to ask "if just talking about an issue with a professional alleviates an issue, isn't that a placebo?"

And the answer is obviously, "No, talk therapy is an extremely well-known mental health intervention with an extremely high effect size on average"

Anxiety and depression are disorders in the way you think about things. If you provide someone with a different and effective way of thinking about things, your are directly treating the disorder. The "maladaptive pattern" flowchart[1] might be a meme, but it's also a very real concept in psychology.

From a more personal point of view: while a label can defining be used in a confining way where it serves as an excuse to not "have to" do a thing (and I certainly know people like that), I find it's very useful to have something concrete to point at and say "this method that other people claim works great won't work for me because my brain doesn't work like that, I need to find a way to alter the method to make myself successful".

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/maladaptive-pattern

Yea placebo is probably the wrong word here. And I agree with you. Often just recognizing something removes it's power. I'm glad the commenter experienced the change they did. Just makes me wonder in this case, the root of it seems like self acceptance - a major theme in (at least my own) therapy. Perhaps a label is a powerful shortcut.

I'm not the author of the post you critique.

I suspect if you just have a "label" it doesn't do much. But the label now makes information a keyword search away. Hence their commentary:

instead I can learn from and lean on hundreds of thousands of other people who have to cope with the same thing.

Which would lead to learning strategies to deal with the day to day rather than struggling to find your own way.

Knowledge is power. But power still has to be used to mean anything.

Once you've learned the strategies that work for you. Then I guess the label loses it's power.

> the label now makes information a keyword search away

I think this can become a double-edged sword in some cases. When applied to certain problems, especially ones with no clear-cut solution, additional knowledge can end up being misleading. (Disclaimer: this is only my experience, and I do not intend to speak for others!)

Example, I always used to frame issues I worked with in the language of ADHD, because I believed that was what best described my pathology. My lack of efficiency at work was an issue of a faulty "executive function". My ability to work uninterrupted for extended periods of time was "hyperfocus". My inability to accept criticism without feeling dejected is an indicator of "rejection sensitive dysphoria".

Yet, after I got therapy that worked for me, I realized three things in short order:

- In my own view, there were no deficits in my executive function. It had been intact the entire time. It was actually uncontrolled stress that was causing my executive function not to operate at its maximum capacity. Hence my problem had not been one of executive function, but of stress relief.

- "Hyperfocus" was merely another way for me of saying "putting sustained attention on an activity to cope with unchecked stress." I no longer consider myself to hyperfocus (which I define as working 3+ hours straight at a time, only stopping for food in between), but at the same time I don't perceive I've lost any of my abilities. On the contrary, I gained the ability to participate in and actually enjoy a wider variety of activities more consistently (cooking, cleaning, socialization, exercise, reading, and many others), as well as start and stop each activity when I please, without losing too much time to activities I only used as a coping mechanism for stress (doomscrolling, social media, etc.). In a sense, my interests became more balanced, even though I still carry the same level of passion for a few niche activities (arguably even stronger for some).

- Criticism does not hurt me as strongly as it did before, when I am aware the criticism is coming from a constructive place and is not merely the feelings of the other party making themselves clear in dramatic fashion. If it's the latter, I now have the ability to ignore the other party and move on. I am now also motivated to avoid going to places where people are likely to criticize me unconstructively. I understood that this was the way to deal with criticism in the past, but I was unable to internalize how to act and feel about criticism until now. Hence, I am no longer dysphoric in this way, if I ever was.

So at least in my view, after I gained a sense of inner peace not having to deal with runaway stress anymore, several problems that I used to see as pathological - having terms such as "executive function" and "dysphoria" - turned out not to be any kind of pathology at all. They were only the aftereffects of excessive daily stress.

In my case, these terms weren't the most helpful for me to understand and work on the real issues underlying my core self, and thus get back a much greater return for the effort I expended - which was much less effort than spending months, years and a lot of money on recurring therapies tailored towards framing my problems in an ADHD-centric way.

> additional knowledge can end up being misleading

Absolutely! But with a label you have:

- meaningful options you didn't have before

- hope drawn from those around you who have found ways to cope.

- knowing that you are not alone

The label doesn't fix you. But it's a good starting point. Answers don't jump out and grab you; you have to filter and verify.

And from the rest of your post it seems you managed to do that. And by having your experience here you have provided valuable context for others in a similar scenario. Thank you.

Totally agree it was a good starting point. I have made a lot of friends in the communities I gained access to via diagnoses and we're still good friends to this day. It's all part of a journey with multiple stages.

Think of it this way: The shape of a hammer compels you to hammer things down with it, but with sustained effort and creativity you can use it for chiseling marble instead.

To reach where I am now, I had to undo some amount of (but not all!) progress I'd made in one direction (since I had bought into the therapy circuit for treating ADHD already) and actively resist attempts to pathologize my own behaviors.

People say "don't treat ADHD like an identity" like it's easy, but the nature of a label compels you to treat it like an identity sometimes. Especially in the society I live in where awareness and destigmatization of conditions is pushed on social media all the time. And especially when your life lacks other meaning and you crave an identity to anchor yourself onto ("just don't make it your identity" sounded like "just don't be depressed" innumerable times to past depressed me, and I saw little reason not to take hold of a new identity for myself). This is a function of depression so I don't blame anyone for it, but I ultimately felt better served by other movements as far as making tangible gains in my mental health.

To use the metaphor again, the art of chiseling was unlikely to make itself known in my current state, but deep down inside I preferred to be there than where I was, so I had to deliberately seek out a teacher and undo the preconceived notions about myself in order to get there. In reality that was just finding another form of therapy that was more effective for solving my problems.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the "normal things have 'ADHD' translations" bit. It reads the same as trans to me - a counterculture subculture where you get to feel good about things you feel bad about.

You stop for food?

I mean if I was so hungry I felt like falling over and dying, or my concentration was so impacted by hunger I had no choice but to eat.

It would be a placebo if it was intended to do nothing, but it's not, it's intended to help explain what's going on. It's not just a label, it's got meaning, and it's a way to find out more and find other people dealing with similar things.

Very well said.

Russel Barkley, in his book “Leading With ADHD,” actually suggested mentioning or “blaming” your ADHD after a mistake as a way to foster empathy for your personal challenges. It’s not intended to be an excuse, but rather a means for the other person, who assumes XYZ is effortless, to comprehend better/gain empathy.

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.

And then after a while the energy fades..you get distracted again. You get both over stimulated and understimulated and the quest for another thing that gives you the feeling of the world finally clicking into place begins.. And each of these fixes (brain.fm, nootropics, adhd-planner-apps etcetc) give you that feeling just for a little while… That’s why we crave it..and because we (can) have more energy we talk about those (a lot!!). But in the end most of us just go from one fix to another..some of us are just really loud about it..

How did the diagnosis help you cope? Did you seek some kind of treatment as a result? Did it help you change your behavior? You are describing a lot of what I experience but having someone say "me too" doesn't help me personally with overcoming these challenges.

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.

Thanks for the reply. Did you suspect you had ADHD before the diagnosis?

>my intense hyperfocus on one thing at a time but also inability to keep consistently focused on one thing for more than a few weeks

Sounds extremely normal to me. I wonder what I'm missing.

For example, suppose a typical person decides to learn a new language.

At the beginning, they are very excited and enthusiastic about it. They might buy a textbook, download an app or sign up for language classes, and spend lots of time on it for a couple of days.

After a week or two, as the tediousness sets in and the goal seems farther off than they expected, they start to shift their focus to something else. After a month, there's a 50/50 chance they completely forget about language study and stop doing it. Only a very small minority will last more than a year.

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

Another example: meditation. A new meditation practitioner may try to focus on their breathing, but then find they usually get distracted and start thinking about something else within 10 seconds.

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'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. Here's my story:

1. I can focus and solve hard problems, but you’ll notice my legs swinging restlessly, hand gestures, or me suddenly typing a completely unrelated web address.

2. I was always a great student, but I was also the most restless; making jokes and talking constantly, no matter how hard I was punished for my behavior.

3. The toughest part of my ADHD is inconsistency. My performance can fluctuate a lot, and it takes tremendous effort to stay consistent. I get bored quickly with easy tasks, so I rely on alarms, calendar events, and other reminders to help me stay on track.

4. People like me are prime targets for distraction businesses, whether it’s social media, gambling, or other addictive behaviors. And a lot of my energy goes to resist them.

All in all, even for a functioning person like myself - managing ADHD takes a lot of effort. In my late 30s, I’m finally feeling a bit more in control. I’ve accepted that this is part of who I am, and while I can’t fix it completely, I’m doing my best to avoid letting it impact the people around me.

I would recommend you pay careful attention to your diet

- get the proper amount of essential fatty acids

- experiment with vitamins, especially magnesium

- green, leafy vegetables

- minimal processed sugar & zero alcohol

And exercise. Get some cardio, even if it's just walking for a half-hour to an hour.

It's a struggle, but learning your body will help you optimize your performance and consistency.

Peace be with you, and I wish you the best of luck.

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.

I get that now, but I'm diagnosed, too, with ADHD. Maybe that's why I forgot to mention that I'm in the same, exact boat.

I'm still a foot-tapper at nearly 60, with high blood pressure putting the kaibosh on Adderall, so I do the best I can with what I can.

Those are the techniques that I have found to work for me, but I wouldn't and didn't call any of them a miracle. No, this programmer's life is non-trivially difficult for we ADHD folks, friend.

I apologize for not making that clear, but I'm certainly not downplaying ADHD's reality or difficulty after having dealt with it for over 30 years.

And taking Adderall is not without its side-effects, so I wouldn't recommend either it or pharma-grade cannabis, because I'm not a doctor, and those things are dangerous. I only recommend the safest possible path. Besides, all my recommendations actually helped me get the most out of Adderall for the few years I had my prescription.

In my experience, there are no miraculous shortcuts, but those are the ways I have found help me tamp it down, after years and years of struggling with it, which has been daily for me with my passion for programming still going strong.

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

> but its not impossible

No but it actually is though. The entire thing with ADHD is that the whole attention mechanism is defective.

Yes I can purposefully focus on something, but not consistently or over longer periods. That's the handicap. It's not a matter of not trying hard enough or figuring out one crazy trick. People with ADHD work differently from normal people and so far there's no fix for it.

Hey, person with ADHD here. It is not impossible and you are victimizing all of us by stating it is.

There are extreme methods you can take that legitimately solve for the "defective wiring", such as meditating 10 hours a day. It's not permanent once you go off it, but you, yes you, can read a novel straight through.

But you don't actually need to go that far to reap 80 percent of the benefits. Real, effective protocols lower the threshold for stimulation. Constant novelty (seeking escape in external stimuli such as phones and computers) exacerbate our symptoms.

This whole identifying as a person with ADHD thing has gone way too far, and I say this as someone who has struggled with it my entire life.

You can do something about it and that something about it isn't only restricted to medication.

I've also got ADHD, I'm not just spouting unsubstantiated bullshit.

I was simplifying, maybe too much, but honestly I am sick and tired of people that keep telling me to "just try harder". I'm running at redline fucking 24/7 and it's barely enough to survive.

I wasn't implying that if you've got ADHD you might as well give up trying to focus or productive. I'm just saying that expecting an ADHD person to get the same results as someone without without lots extra effort is absurd.

You can say what you like but ADHD is a real handicap for which we do not have a cure. We've got workarounds with different levels of efficacy. I'm tired of being expected to measure up to a standard which I both can't do and don't even want to do.

That's what I do for myself, friend.

I'm diagnosed ADHD, too.

My luck is that I have a loving wife who helps me. It would be far more difficult without her, but I guess I would have to use checklists if I had to do this on my own.

I should've said that I've been ADHD since my early 20s and have been coping for over 30 years.

Or maybe it should have been obvious by the specificity of my advice.

I figured you either were or would claim to be adhd.

I see lots of harmful "advice" pushed by supposed ADHD sufferers.

One time I saw an older ADHD sufferer trying to mentor a young person with ADHD by telling him to cut out preservatives and take up meditation.

Leafy Greens and Pay Attention are barely a step beyond vagina crystals and positive thinking, and its awesome that you think they worked for you, but people should be referred for proper medical treatment, always. Even if you add your other wins as supplementary options, it should never be seen to be something alternative to medicine.

Meditation has reams upon reams of scientific literature behind it. Equating it to a step above vagina crystals is spitting in the face of research going back at least half a century.

Meditation can and does help those with ADHD, especially in conjunction with correct medication.

>in conjunction with correct medication.

>in conjunction with correct medication.

>in conjunction with correct medication.

That's not what I said. I said, especially in conjunction with correct medication.

You're not arguing in good faith, and haven't everywhere you've commented in this thread. You've been nasty, short, and insulting to everyone you've engaged with.

Equating the benefits of meditation and learning to exercise the muscle of attention to "vagina crystals" is pure ignorance with an agenda.

Have you ever considered that you may just be an asshole?

I had a psychiatrist for my Adderall prescription, but he was really just a drug dealer who was forced to retire after one of his patients committed suicide. But that was long after I had quit Adderall and learned how to deal with my shit on my own.

Anyway, I wish you well, and please find a medical professional that can evaluate your real problem.

There it is, you are pushing this stuff because you have an anti medication bent. Thanks for owning up.

No man, I wish I had done these things when I was on Adderall. They're good for anyone, whether they're medicated or not.

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.

I got a lot of work done for a few years, thanks to Adderall, but that ship has sailed because of high blood pressure.

I'm not selling anything, my friend. I'm sorry I didn't tell anyone that I was diagnosed with ADHD over 15 years ago, but I've been in the trenches for a long time now.

And, absolutely, medicine is next-level helpful, but if you can't use it, as I can't, then you have to do the best you can. Out of my love for others like me, I simply offered the best non-pharmaceutical advice I could, because that's what I use.

Peace be with you.

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.

Is it woo if I'm a diagnosed with ADHD, too, which I am?

I explain this more fully in my other comments in this thread.

This isn't woo, my friend; it's the advise of programmer who has been in the ADHD trenches for over 30 years. And it's the best advice I can give because it's the best set of advice that I wished I would have gotten those decades ago.

Labels in public health are absolutely problematic for exactly that reason.

But I will also say that ADHD, if you have it, is an essential part of your identity regardless of your awareness of the label.

It's not an essential part of my identity. There are symptoms that I sometimes and sometimes do not display that can be managed with medication and behavioral changes.

Part of the problem is the identifying with a spectrum of symptoms we assume to be eternal and unchanging.

I tend to find it's causing things even if I'm trying to avoid essentializing it, and this also goes for side effects of medications for it.

eg relationship advice says you shouldn't "change your personality" for your partner, but in my last relationship both of ours changed quite a lot when our medication changed or even if we hadn't taken it that day, so I don't really feel attached to it.

There’s so much survivor bias in these comments.

We know what happens when ADHD is underdiagnosed and not recognized in society (which requires it to be labeled appropriately). You have scores of children who get labeled as “problematic” or “bad students” ans suffer from that discrimination for the rest of their lives.

Labeling may not help a particular individual but helps all in society as a whole

During COVID, the amount of people diagnosed skyrocketed. I was one, and I was putting it off for a long time. I think you see it a lot because of this; If I'm a content creator, tagging it with ADHD puts it on the feed of a lot of people that are newly-diagnosed/self-diagnosed.

I completely agree with you though, I don't mention it to people generally. I may be quirky and might have some weird rigid rules about how I work personally, but I hate the idea of sharing it publicly.

Final note: I think it's a good marketing tool for productivity tools. "It's such a good to-do list that people with ADHD can find success with it! That implies that if you don't have ADHD, you will be a superhero when you use it!"

My life got infinitely better when I stopped believing in any of that. It feels more like a spiritually bereft western pseudo-religion and I resent anyone parading around these titles.

Definitely agree there. There seems like there is a label for EVERYTHING these days. Coincidentally there was an article in the paper I saw just today about how destructive self diagnosis can be (and how many gen z / alpha are doing that via tiktok) I rememeber when some first tried to explain ADHD to me... and I was like... "what? elementary school kids dont like sitting in a classroom for 6 hours a day? so like, being NORMAL?"

Source: I had / (have?) ADHD, don't think about it at all anymore, just keep working hard, stick with hobbies and you can do great things regardless of what "labels" society has assigned you.

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 used to look at ADHD with scepticism until I met someone who it to a debilitating level. Shared a room with them once at a conference and seeing them in the morning before taking their pills was eye-opening. They were trying to have about 10 conversations at once, switching between them from sentence-to-sentence, every time they sat down to do something they instantly sprang up and started doing something else before springing up and switching yet again to something else, it was exhausting for me and I was just watching.

Whether I believe that the number of people who actually get diagnosed with ADHD is correct, especially in places that have medical systems and cultures like the USA, I’m not sure, but certainly I now see how for some people it can be completely disabling.

If your life improved when you stopped believing in the symptoms that's a good thing for you but it also means you probably didn't actually have symptoms.

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.

It's likely a definitive example of selection bias, you won't hear people not talking about having it, but ADHD affects (approximately) 30% of the population.

Assuming even a tiny amount of those are loud when exploring their discovery would mean a lot of people talking about it online.

This is likely also combined with Millennials (my cohort at least) being one of the most self-aware generational cohorts in history (while also being a tad self-centered).

I have my own journey with ADHD ("many markers" but no official diagnosis, as that could negatively affect my life in Sweden) and it was really liberating to learn that, no, I wasn't just lazy, that I may have an issue with executive function and if I work around it I can at least partially tackle it.

The amount of stress that gets applied by society for people who are "not performing up to their potential" or slacking off or what-have-you is actually quite immense when you cannot force yourself to work, so I understand people who feel liberated in the moment and who seek solutions, loudly.

My understanding is that ADHD prevalence is closer to 5-10%. That's the number I've seen most by reputable sources.

Nonetheless, the rest of your post resonates with me and and your points stand on their own :)

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/...

Once it's at this level of prevalence, can it really be considered neurologically atypical?

The broader point that's often missed is that this is a naturally occurring and common phenotype that doesn't gel well with office-work culture and the modern regimented schooling system, forcing people to sit for unnaturally long times focusing on anxiety-inducing problem solving all day. It's not normal, and it's a recipe for burnout, and our only answer, is not to change the system, but to try and medicate it away, with sometimes devastating consequences.

It really depends on the level of impact. Lots of people will have small quirks and uncomfortable isolated events which map onto typical symptoms. On the other hand, there's going to be much fewer with severe enough impact to classify it as an issue in their lives.

The impact can only be measured by how it negatively affects one's living standards or societal participation, both of which can be attended to by society-at-large by making society the problem, not the person. Though it's interesting to see, in the OP, an AI solution to facilitate executive functioning. And perhaps AI will be what liberates many people from the difficult and unnatural requirements that are imposed by modern lifestyles.

It seems odd that as a society it's been deemed a-okay to pathologize a cluster of traits shared by 30% of the population.

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?

20% of people are infected with herpes. So yeah, definitely worth dealing with the common problems.

It's a defence mechanism, I think. Most of your life people tell you your lazy, weird, etc. These things become part of your identity and they hurt and hold you back. ADHD is a problem with solutions so replacing those internalized labels helps. Even if it's not the most healthy solution.

> I see a lot of people with ADHD (on- and offline) who tend to make it an essential part of their identity

Honest question: why is this an issue? If someone makes it part of their identity its because they feel its important for others to know, and that can be for a variety of reasons.

Is there a reason we shouldn't make it part of our identity, if we so choose?

You should choose what is right for you and accept that others won't like it, like anything else in life

Because they want to gatekeep it and how you are supposed to act with it.

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?

Because attaching to an unstable spectrum of symptoms and making it an essential cornerstone of an "I" is a terrible idea, no matter who you are. The "I" is just as formless, slippery, and unstable.

Secondly, when we do attach, we now have a shield we can use to abdicate responsibility for, well, the duties of being a human in a society. I've had to remind people who have thrown their hands up to exclaim, "I have ADHD!" that hey there buddy, so do I, but I still have to live my life right here in the same society/job/relationship they do.

Where diagnoses like ADHD are useful is as frameworks to understanding your own symptoms, but there's no reason to pull them in as part of you, and I've seen a great deal of harm done in our generation by people insisting on playing out their identity fantasies.

Considering ADHD is poorly understood, historically highly underdiagnosed and significantly prevalent it’s not surprising there’s a lot of content about trying to to understand it for both people with and without ADHD.

By "a lot of people with ADHD" do you include people who are also self-diagnosed?

I ask because my experience is similar to yours (I also have ADHD). Anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt: I work in software engineering, know and have worked with a lot of self-diagnosed ADHDs who make it part of their identity, while some of them probably do have ADHD, the vast majority of them feel like perfectly normal people who would latch onto any opportunity to prove that they have ADHD. (e.g. people who have a single habit that could be stimming but otherwise don't exhibit and ADHD traits saying stuff like "sorry I can't help myself because of my ADHD brain").

In contrast those I know who have been properly diagnosed don't behave like they constantly need to tell people they have ADHD. They are usually deeply interested in the condition but you probably wouldn't know unless there is a proper setting for them to disclose it (invited to talk to an audience about their experience) or if you're someone they trust.

It feels like people who have the tendency to make ADHD part of their identity just want to been seen as special and important in some way (I don't mean this negatively) perhaps because that's how they see their genuinely neurodivergent peers. They tend to have many excuses for not getting a diagnosis because they won't risk the chance of finding out that they don't have ADHD as they have already made it part of their identity.

On the uglier side, there is also no shortage of people lying about having medical conditions for clout and money on the Internet.

My team knows I have it because I am on the severe side of the spectrum, but I otherwise agree with the general take that those who are properly diagnosed are less likely to make it part of their identity or let people know than those who aren’t.

It’s likely that those using it in a self diagnosed way are using it as a way to have an excuse for something they do that is unpleasant.

That said, I have no trouble freely talking about it either. The shame is gone for me now. It is part of my life therefore my identity in some form

Yeah making it a focal point of identity seems to be very popular online and I find it extremely offputting. For myself, medication helped little if at all and sometimes made me feel worse. Although I do notice a difference in my ability to focus with good diet and exercise, the biggest positive changes come from better sleep habits and nearly eliminating unnecessary tech use. ADHD is a dopamine disorder and our smartphones are little slot machines.

I also feel like A LOT of people have ADHD (a lot more than it was initially estimated). I think like 50% or more of the population is neurodivergent (or maybe it's because neurodivergent people tend to group together, so everyone around you seems neurodivergent too).

If the majority are divergent, then what are they divergent from?

Then the variable name is wrong...

If you want a test for Huntington’s Disease in the UK — a terrible degenerative disease — they basically tell you no. You can appeal and do a long course of genetic counselling where at the end they’ll give you the choice, if you still want one.

This is the reason: people who know they’re definitely carrying the gene will start to ascribe any clumsiness, any brain fog, anything at all to the disease once they know they’re definitely carrying definitely have it.

> I see a lot of people with ADHD who tend to make it an essential part of their identity

I have seen the same thing with everything from cancer to divorce to death of a child.

> What happened to "music for concentration"?

ADHD is a structural brain difference that results in different and in some cases paradoxical responses to various things that affect alertness, attention, etc. Which makes a very good reason to distinguishing between things “for concentration” (presumably targeting neurotypical audiences) and things “for ADHD”.

fwiw I see more posts like yours than I see posts that your post describes.

I have symptoms. My only approach is to mitigate through diet, exercise, sleep, and a small dose of caffeine and nicotine. Oh, and limiting decision making (automate, defer, or grease the rails), avoid attention traps (endless scrolling). And so on.

In my mind, ADHD and identification with ADHD (self labeling, medical system labels, etc.) is only a liability.

The problem with ADHD is, that the symptoms are very common and it is mostly the degree to which an actual case of ADHD is different from the neurotypical person. So, a big portion of the overall population feels like they might have it and many of them are willing to put in whatever work it takes to find a doctor that confirms their diagnosis.

Underdiagnosis is a much bigger issue. There are millions who are dealing with this alone and without awareness that can help them.

Sincerely, person diagnosed at age 35

I have ADHD and I've decided that it's part of my identity.

I was diagnosed late at 28. When I got diagnosed, my psychologist told me that I had to reassess my life. Many behaviors that people had misinterpreted as laziness, carelessness, or lack of commitment were actually manifestations of my ADHD.

Friends who thought I didn't care when I forgot plans, teachers who believed I wasn't trying hard enough, and colleagues who saw me as disorganized - they were all seeing untreated ADHD symptoms, not character flaws.

Understanding this was liberating because it meant I wasn't fundamentally flawed as a person. I had to rebuild myself, my confidence - it was a new start in life.

It's a process to relearn and teach yourself that you can do it now. Labeling publicly, saying to your friends and family that you are ADHD makes it so that you OWN your change, you OWN your disability.

tldr, ADHD as an IDENTIY is for me : Reclaim control over your narrative instead of letting others define your behaviors

Create accountability for yourself and set realistic expectations with others

Remove shame from the equation by openly acknowledging your challenges

Enable yourself to access appropriate accommodations and support systems

> who tend to make it an essential part of their identity.

I tend to notice that more with younger people who find out earlier and get it treated.

Finding out in your 30's because you realize things shouldn't be going so inexplicably wrong is different.

I think people in their 20s find it easier to make group identities, and being in a group that tends to be disadvantaged is a uniting force. This is true whether or not you actually have ADHD, which is a problem for sure.

I'm in the middle of pursuing an autism diagnosis as an adult, and despite the obvious manifold benefits it would bring to my family's life, judgment from people like you is the #1 reason I'm hesitating going through with it.

What exactly is the point you are making?

That ADHD is over diagnosed?

That it doesn’t require tailored interventions or advice?

That social media is exploiting interest in ADHD to provide low quality advice?

Or something else? Can you clarify your point?

Agree & disagree. Agree - some neurodiversity products / self help products are very predatory and aim to make people think it’s the solution for their struggles when they aren’t.

A label by itself isn’t useful until, you understand the condition, how it impacts you, and what things you can do to make your life better, know you know.

Re symptoms like “daydreaming whilst reading a book” tbh think this misses the point. The frequency a barrier happens and the amount of disruption it causes to someone’s everyday is highly significant.

Neurotypical people also daydream whilst reading a book. The difference is if you can’t focus on a book so much you barely get through the first page, on every page you attempt etc.

I’m adhd, autistic and dyslexic. The value of these diagnosis is to be empowered to understand myself, rock where I rock, accept the things I probably will waste time trying to fix, and use various things to address the challenges I have, that are possible to address and worth effort.

Similar things exist for dyslexia, introverts, etc

I've ADHD and I'm on the spectrum. Others may differ - it's a spectrum after all- but I feel no list-only app will ever silence the drunk baboon on my shoulder constantly pulling my attention from what I'm doing.

I'd advise goblin.tools to market itself differently and aim for the neurotypical market as well.

#my2cents

Yeah, no gameification or breaking down can make doing the dishes or writing documentation more interesting than whatever my interest of the month is, unfortunately. I'd be beyond cooked without medication

I ended up taking my own path towards small-scale tooling. I've been using the binaural audio trick through youtube for some years now, particularly the rendered 40hz trick to clear my head.

The insight was that a lot of the noise pulling me off center was coming from built up clenching of muscles around my head and back, and a destabilization of core posture while sitting, leading to shaky leg and such.

The project I built was simply a mixable tone dashboard for different frequencies. Ive been dogfooding it hard, and its my goto to push around my headspace to clear out the noise and make a protected space for work. The easiest litmus for tone choice has just been, 'does this help or hurt'. On my better days its like im giving my brain a massage and I have the most productive times.

https://1ps0.github.io/binaural

A note: i load the file directly from repo when I use it on Firefox, theres an audiocontext policy i havent been able to figure out. Should work great on mobile and elsewhere.

ADHD + spectrum as well. I couldn't agree with this more.

I second that, I saw a lot, I tried some... most of them are just task planners, but I was always missing same basic features.

what is that same basic feature they are all missing?

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.

https://tasks.org/ meets every requirement you list.

With one exception, as I don't know what you mean by "Visible in my taskbar and stuff like need". I don't have a taskbar on my phone, but if you mean on a desktop, then I solve that using sync. I access synced tasks with desktop apps, which this is not. I also share one synced task list with my spouse. Other phone integration I use is having multiple task widgets on my home screens.

All of my personal reminders and tasks are tracked in this app. I use a lot of recurring tasks. While it doesn't explicitly count days overdue, it does show and can sort by due date, and can (re-)trigger notifications X days past due.

Chances are your plants don't need watered every 2 days. If you're actually married to the exact implementation you described, carry on and good luck! Otherwise, having learned from my share of drowned plants and as I read those requirements, they'd be met by a task recurring for a due date 4-10 days after completion and a start date 1-3 days before due, so you'd not see it again until a few days after it was last completed and have some days in which to complete it, where this repeats as desired regardless of when it actually gets done. This is a common pattern for me, such as my "check tire pressure" task recurring X weeks after completion. The start date controls how many days before that next due date that it starts being shown again, I do not worry about it going negative, and, after the start date, I get a location-based notification when at the location where I normally complete the task.

Thanks, will try it.

>> Visible in my taskbar

On Android, when you pull down from the top, you have like songs currently played and/or other currently active programs. So, it's the one area of the screen that is available from every other screen.

>> If you're actually married to the exact implementation you described

Not really, it was just the kind of solution that came into my mind when thinking about this kind of problems. I am very bad in keeping track of tasks. From the outside it looks like lazyness, from the inside it's a mixture of "forgetting" and "priorities". Having a feature that lists long overdue tasks at the top, could ease that. You haven't watered your plants for two days? Ok, they can handle that. But what about tire pressure overdue for 12 days - its about time!

Anyways, will try it. Or, which is on my plate for a while now, will build my own app. That's what I do for a living, except: I couldn't find the time to do it because of the other thousand things to do before.

Looks really great! But…not available for iOS.

The comment to which I replied and gave this recommendation mentioned Android and did not mention Apple.

I'm not diagnosed anything, but I'm a paid user because of Magic ToDo -- and I don't even use it that often. It really is magic, and I use it most often as a demonstration of what LLMs are capable of in somewhat unusual use cases.

I’m quite NT and I tried Magic Todo and was impressed. This is really a great application of the tech.

I have to say my neurotypical family members love goblin chef tool as well as the spectrum individual.

There are other tools in the menu.

> goblin.tools is written and maintained by Bram De Buyser, an AI, software and data engineer.

I'm not saying that a semicolon and an Oxford comma are _necessary_, here - but I am saying that I did a double-take at my first interpretation that we are now naming and personifying AIs.

Your reaction proves the entire point of the Oxford comma -- to eliminate this kind of confusion. It absolutely should have been written as "...Buyser, an AI, software, and data engineer."

There are more reasons to use an Oxford comma than not, and I remain continually surprised that it is not taught as the default.

I intentionally included "a semicolon" in my comment, because, no, even the sentence you wrote is susceptible to garden-path parsing. One _could_ read it as "...written by Buyser, and by an AI, and by software, and by...hmm, wait, there's no indefinite article on 'data engineer', I need to back-up and reparse".

(Just sharing grammatical curiosity, one ~~pedant~~ enthusiast to another - I agree with your second paragraph!)

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

I am neurodivergent. Yet, this website (while well-intentioned) feels chaotic, offering too many things (I bet the author is neurodivergent as well :)). So, instead of doing something from the TODO, I want to give the professor mode a try.

In any case, I saw quite a few time something "expanding the list". Usually it works less than anything that actually asks you on the next step - in this case, my go-to are recent LLM models. For example, it split "take out the trash" into 8 steps - quite a lot of detail, even for an autist.

I asked it to break down eating a pie, this is what I got:

Choose a pie

Gather necessary utensils (fork, plate, napkin)

Place the pie on the plate

Cut a slice of the pie

Pick up the slice with the fork

Bring the slice to your mouth

Take a bite of the pie

Chew and savor the flavor

Repeat until finished

Dispose of any leftovers responsibly

Clean up the utensils and plate

Maybe an absurd example but I feel like something like this makes it seem even more intimidating to do basic tasks

You can adjust the spiciness level (level of detail) to the right of the prompt.

At the lowest you get

    - Select a pie
    - Grab a fork or your hands
    - Take a piece of the pie
    - Bring it to your mouth
    - Chew and swallow the pie

Still probably a bit much, but I think using a to-do list for eating a pie is also a bit much.

I did "get a haircut" and it was a pretty good breakdown. Same with "Paint a room in my house". I think these types of tasks are more suitable for step-by-step breakdowns than "eat a pie".

> still probably a bit much

I think what's worse is that it still over detailed the steps but left out the actually additive steps of the OP's list which I would say is the bit about the getting/cleaning the dishes and trash

That sounds perfect to me. Often on low-spoons days, I'll ask ChatGPT to do exactly this, break down a task or recipe into the simplest, concrete steps to be taken. It's meant to be used when your mental energy is low enough that "obvious" things don't seem obvious anymore, and you need them broken down into a form that doesn't assume or ask anything of you.

It's like taking an old school BASIC program and modularising it into small self-contained functions. That may increase the lines of code by a lot, but it still makes it simpler and easier to process because you only need to keep one function in mind at a time.

Vaguely related: Julio Cortázar’s “Instructions on How to Climb a Staircase” – https://doarchstairs2016.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

If you want to see a really intimidating breakdown, check out Carl Sagan's approach to baking an apple pie from scratch.

I asked it for that, but it refused to estimate the time required to "Conceptualize the universe and its fundamental laws to create the framework for matter and energy."

And then if you asked for a time estimate it would probably take hours to eat that slice. (not mocking the app, I like the idea, I just think its estimation feature is funny)

I enjoyed reading my >30-step process to boil water, which included "wait for the water to come to a boil", and the final step was "review all steps".

Hm, these instructions are interesting -- is it suggesting I repeatedly pick up an entire slice of pie with a fork and take bites out of it?

It sounds like eating a pie will be a huge pain and I’ll give up halfway through it, assuming that I don’t get distracted even before.

This is a great use for LLMs because anywhere that they can get someone over the activation energy requirement of the blank page effect, it's okay if they're wrong – it's much easier to correct a wrong broken-down list than start it oneself.

One of the bigger uses of Llama I found for myself is throwing a description of email to write, having them generate a skeleton for me, this kickstart enough that I can do a rewrite even when I totally lack the energy to start one.

Sometimes also making them rewrite it in a different style then rewriting that manually again

I cautiously like this. I asked it to break down “clean the bathroom” and it gave me a reasonable series of steps.

It then gave a time estimate of 3 hours 25 minutes, but I know from my own time tracking that doing a similar series of steps takes me 40 minutes on average.

It seems to overestimate the time taken to do very simple tasks, so if you break the task down too far then it will always wildly overestimate. Perhaps a fix would be to ask the LLM to make one estimate for the overall task, make separate estimates for each subtask, and then ask it to reconcile the two? Something like chain-of-thought/reasoning.

Oh hey! I made something like this that integrates with TickTick

https://github.com/Podginator/TickGPTick

It needs updating, but basically you set a tag that let’s you expand tasks out much in the way goblin tools does.

I just recently started heavily using TickTick, and my first thought on seeing this was that it would be cool to be able to integrate this into it. Very cool to see someone has done it, thank you!

If I might ask, how was your experience working with the TickTick API? I've been waffling on whether my frustration with some of the pain points I have with it (e.g. no way to hide recurring daily tasks that you've already completed today but aren't actionable for tomorrow from cluttering the "tomorrow" heading in every smart list) justify building my own dashboards for it.

ClickUp already has this integrated natively. Such a lifesaver!

Nice. AI-powered replacement for my missing executive function. Now I just have to remember to use it…

Diversity makes teams stronger but makes clear communication harder. 20% of the population aren't neurotypical... they're simply not wired the same way. Throw in cultural differences.

I was so excited when I found The Judge: Am I misreading the tone of this?

What a wonderful tool to have at hand when things go awry in email threads, chat rooms etc.

Pretty neat. The automatic breakdowns are cool, but you absolutely need to move the delete button inline. Confirm dialog if there are items beneath it, otherwise just delete.

Generated like 10 sub-items for me, 5 of which were relevant. But to remove the 5 junk ones, you have to open the dropdown for each and hit delete.

With the Estimator I asked...

How long to build a Space Shuttle? "5 to 10 years"

How long to build a Time Machine? "5 to 50 years"

Tearing down the governance systems of the United States of America and replacing them with a dictatorship? "Several months to several years"

Democracy is just a handful of key people following some norms. This can change very quickly once the wrong people are in power. See the timeline of the downfall of the Weimar republic.

Curiously, or not, I'm not sure what the expectation is, it seemed to quickly enter somewhat of an infinite loop then I started with "What is the meaning of life?". Around level 3 or 4 each simplification is essentially what was presented for that item in the prior list. Maybe some hidden meaning there ...

What used to work for me is to build a single list every morning (based on yesterdays list) and then just do it one after another without allowing myself to prioritise after that point.

My largest executive function issue is the guilt of not doing some other thing.

If I have a very stressful situation, I can easily organise my thoughts and ruthlessly prioritise what is important from what is not important.

In "peace" times, this doesn't work at all, and instead if I have something that I know will take half a day (say, for example, fixing a subtle bug in the email system) then I will feel guilty about doing that over something else (say: doing paperwork for the worked hours that month).

Thus, I do neither. Until one becomes critical.

It's fucking stupid, but I can't fix it.

I'm very similar to you and going through similar issues.

I've also started to write a to-do list on paper and keep it always open in front of me on my desk. This is the only thing that seems to work for me. If I keep a virtual to-do list, I lose track of it, forget to check/update it and it eventually becomes useless.

You're not alone, hope you find something that works for you!

Nice! Great idea and focus.

I have a similar function built into my app, which takes the proposed name for a checklist and description and uses it to generate steps. Have heard many use it for executive function management: https://steplist.app

In the age of AI, human-written instructions are not only intriguing and valuable but also more dependable and meaningful than those created by AI.

Took a look. So annoying that you can't delete any of those lists. What happens if I don't like/drink coffee?

When you log in you can create your own lists, bookmark ones you might like, and only see the ones you want.

Okay, I wasted a few minutes in The Judge. It's too damn hilarious giving it a passage that insults the reader's mother in fine detail and then having the AI explain very politely and patiently why someone might take offense to that.

I'd really love a voice based AI tool that will follow up with me on projects and next steps.

So like I'm renovating a house and I've got to find someone to help with drywall, get a new top of the septic, get quotes on the driveway, etc. Multiply this a few times with my job and side project and so on.

It would be great if it would just ask me what's new with each thing and update tasks and remind me to follow up with the person not calling me back etc. Of course, all this can be done in your mind or with Todo apps but just something to talk to and nudge would be great.

I’m on the same boat as you. Had this idea some time ago and I feel that this should be doable with today’s LLMs tooling. On the coming weeks I’ll be trying to hook something up and see how far can I get, with the extra requirement from my side that everything should run locally.

I use ChatGPT almost exclusively for this today due to quite extreme ADHD that even when treated, leaves me weaker than most in the executive department. My therapists have always advised that I have some kind of "second brain" where things live, otherwise they just vanish into the ether.

Why use "AI" at all? Because now I have something to yell at me and ask if I actually finished the thing I said I would before jumping into some new thing. If I have not, it can give me a concrete next step to help me overcome the analysis paralaysis that may be preventing completion.

I've worked hard to configure the thing so that it won't tolerate my bullshit. It is entirely structured around pushing me to function as a normal adult should. Yes its sad and pathetic I can not do this alone, how broken must I be that an "AI" is any level of assistance in this area etc. The idea I am sure seems ludicrous to 'normal people' who would never even remotely consider using it for such a thing. However it is what it is, and I would prefer the shame that comes with the extreme benefit I have received as opposed to the opposite.

"Drink water", extra spicy:

---->

Identify the need to stay hydrated

Determine the time of day to drink water

Locate a clean source of water

Decide which container to use for drinking

If using a bottle, check if it’s clean

If using a glass, wash it if necessary

Go to the location of the water source

Open the water source

If it’s a tap, turn on the faucet

If it’s a bottled water, twist off the cap

Position your chosen container under the water source

Fill the container with water

Monitor the amount of water being poured

Stop pouring when the container is sufficiently full

Turn off the water source if applicable

If using a bottle, securely close the cap

If using a glass, hold the glass in your hand

Bring the container close to your mouth

Tilt the container slightly

Allow the water to flow into your mouth

Ensure that you are swallowing the water

Continue drinking until you feel satisfied

Place the container back down on a surface

If applicable, wipe your mouth with a tissue

Notice how your body feels after drinking

Reflect on the importance of hydration

Make a mental note to drink water regularly

Plan for the next time to drink water

If you have used a glass, wash it after use

If using a bottle, check if it needs refilling

Recognize when your thirst returns

Consider drinking water with meals in the future

Remind others around you about the benefits of drinking water

Incorporate water-drinking breaks into your daily routine

Stay aware of your personal hydration goals

Adjust your water intake based on physical activity

Explore flavored water options if desired

Track your water consumption if it helps you stay accountable

Celebrate when you reach your hydration goals

I kind of love it :)

When I open the app and am greeted by a mostly blank screen with an empty todo list, the first thing I think is "How is this different from any other task manager app? How do use it in a way that would help me?".

And then I close the tab! (naturally, ofc)

A little bit of onboarding / guidance on how neurodiverge peeps can get the most out of it would go a long way.

Haha Magic ToDo is fun. I got a reasonable set of steps for a project and when I'm in the "whatever, just tell me what to do" overwhelmed/surrender mode this would be great. Also love that subtasks can be easily broken down into subsubtasks with a click.

Would love this as a todoist extension for brainstorming subtasks.

Yeah, randomly AI-generating a large list of imagined sub tasks is just the thing to manage e.g. ADHD.

You want to do this well, lean into pre-defined (and user-defined!) checklists instead. Sure, use AI to help people generate the checklist if you must, but the value is having a repeatable procedure.

So how many neuro-divergent people did you test this on before you made the claim that it would help them?

    Dish Name: Simmered Water Broth
    Serving Size: 1 cup (240 ml)
    
    Ingredients:
    - Water: 1 cup (240 ml)

Wait where's the 300 word intro about how their dog lived on their summer estate's farm before being adopted into the family?

adhd here. bad enough to not graduate from high school on time. I have been medicated for a decade now and I dream of finally having built my systems around life up to the degree that I feel good about discontinuing them. It's not good for you to be on stimulants every day like I am. If your flavor of adhd is mild and the functional impairment you have doesn't literally ruin your life, consider working your way up the theraputic ladder from therapy with an ADHD specialized therapist, starting meds only if necessary. Consider your goals wrt your brain stuff and measure your results against that. Don't get on the meds unless you have to.

> bad enough to not graduate from high school on time.

This is a good example of how wide the ADHD spectrum can be. From my perspective, I’d actually call this mild, not because it is, but because I never finished high school at all. My parents bought into stigma and refused meds against medical advice, and the fallout ruined both my childhood and much of my adult life.

I get you're aiming for a cautious take, but I’d urge anyone reading this to think hard before following it. If you do have more than mild ADHD, this kind of “avoid meds” advice can be genuinely harmful, it’s the kind of thinking that keeps people suffering for years when they don’t have to.

As an adult, I refused meds while my life continued to fall apart. Convinced by stigma and those that constantly shouted "MEDICATION BAD." So as my life spiraled ever downwards, I increased the rate at which I beat my self up telling myself constantly I just needed more willpower, better systems, or the right therapist and it would all change. Spoiler alert: none of it worked without the baseline support stimulants gave me and refusing to medicate was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. It did such a degree of damage to my life it's not even possible to begin to describe it.

Stimulants aren’t inherently dangerous when used properly. What is dangerous is untreated or mistreated ADHD and the damage it causes, to you the individual and those around you. The therapeutic ladder should start with what works, framing meds as a “last resort” is unhelpful and rooted in stigma, not reality.

If you think you have ADHD, get off the internet and see a real doctor. Work with them to figure out what actually helps you without assumption or expectation and don’t let other people’s experiences or stigma decide your treatment for you.

I largely agree with you. I do think that for the people with ADHD who graduated college and got advanced degrees, who held down jobs in industry for years before getting an inkling they had ADHD - they should indeed use the theraputic ladder, starting with therapy first.

I don't say that because I think medication is inherently evil, but because I believe the therapy actually worked quite well in my case. If other people can get the step change in their quality of life for the cost of relatively short term, and avoid a lifetime of medication, why would they not? I want people to consider this option.

And yes, see a real doctor - and not one who, like mine, heard my story and said "OK you've probably got it, here's a prescription for adderall".

Edit to add: I feel you wrt to the parental stigma. It burned me as well. My parents took me to some lab visit where they hooked me up to an EEG and made me press buttons when lights went on. Weirdly enough, the novel situation was quite stimulating for me, and I was given a clear negative diagnosis. Any time the topic came up again after that I was shut down. Took until my 20s to get any help for it, and another 5 years to seek therapy, which has been great.

One of the best tools I've seen this year!

I'm not sure about "neurodivergent people" part though. I don't think I'd call myself neurodivergent or anything close. Pretty sure the app will be useful for anyone.

I tried 'Clean home' and it gave me:

Gather cleaning supplies (broom, mop, vacuum, cleaning solutions, cloths)

Declutter each room by picking up items that don’t belong

Dust surfaces such as shelves, tables, and electronics

Wipe down surfaces with appropriate cleaning solutions

Clean glass surfaces and mirrors

Sweep or vacuum all floors

Mop hard floor surfaces

Clean carpets (vacuum or spot clean if necessary)

Freshen up the bathroom (clean toilet, sink, and shower)

Organize items back to their designated places

Take out the trash and recycling

Final walk-through to ensure everything is tidy

Seems perfectly reasonable, given the prompt.

I think most people would consider that launching a website is a separate task from viewing a website.

Most computer people, perhaps. For the average user the difference between an app and a website (especially an app-like website) is much fuzzier, and “launching” an app sounds more technical (and thus more appropriate for an operation that they don’t entirely understand) than “opening” it, so that’s the word they use.

I expect an LLM to be smarter than that, particularly for an audience that frequently works in the technology industry.

Biasing the tool for a developer audience would hurt it's usefulness to more general audiences. I did not get the impression the tools were meant only for developers.

In the 1990s, we frequently used the phrase "launch a website" to mean "navigate to the website", so your prompt could have been clearer than just three words.

“Launching” an application (browser) has been a common phrase for as long as I can remember.

You are the only person discussing “launching an application” in this thread.

How else would you view a website? You've never heard anyone say, "bring up google.com" or "launch google.com"? I've heard those phrases and similar all the time. It's common parlance.

I mean, yeah, that makes sense given that you used a 3 word prompt. It doesn't use real magic, despite having "magic" in the name. You should probably give it some more context.

I typed in "get a haircut" and it worked great.

In reply to your edit:

>I think most people understand there is a difference between launching a website and viewing a website.

I don't think so, at all. Non-tech people at my work come to me and say "I couldn't launch Outlook this morning", or "Google won't launch". They don't mean that they are building an email client or search engine. Most people use "launch" in the non-entrepreneurial way.

I suspect this tool is probably tuned to help with “14-step coffee days”[1] rather than big projects; the list you got is genuinely the more plausibly helpful one for that situation.

[1] https://crafty-butch.tumblr.com/post/638122754578726912/by-w...

Try "ask a question unambiguously", haha!

> I think most people understand there is a difference between launching a website and viewing a website.

No. Only if these people work in IT or somewhat interested. Most people will be pretty confused actually, they understand "starting\launching a business".

Many people are sure that you can create a website just by going into Gmail menus and doing some "techy magic".

I mean this could've happened with a human counterpart too (although, I know, less likely, but still). You probably gotta be at least a little more descriptive and specific about the task.

i can imagine a tool where you take a picture of a cluttered desk or closet, and it produces a list of all the objects and then comes up with a plausible organization plan.

that's a little more complicated than these tools, but it seems within reach given publicly available technology. image segmentation models are really good now, the list of objects would be pretty reliable at least.

This is very cool.

Needs a bit of UI love for mobile. If you break down tasks 3 levels deep in becomes unusable.

Open-ended prompting seems to go against your prescription of more curation. Also, I don't think most people want to think about LLM prompting. The tool should be prompting for me. I think they are going towards the right direction of how to use LLMs, not away from it.

A "break down task into steps" would be a great feature for every todolist app.

A problem is that the proposed audience are individuals who struggle with options. Giving them more options doesn't help them. Enabling a power user mode with user creation, voting, etc. would be valuable for others. I suspect template sharing in some situations is problematic because getting great results for an audience can have text which some will find objectionable.

>A problem is that the proposed audience are individuals who struggle with options. Giving them more options doesn't help them.

That's a fair point. But the current thin wrapper around an LLM doesnt help them either. Better to help someone at least.

AI backend.

Hacker News Comment.

Niche meta deep cut quip

vibe coding? nope. 100% vibe life

This is neat. I wish I could self host it, I wouldn't use it otherwise.

This should make it easier for people to adapt when their job adopts Manna™.

whats the product here exactly? 8 llm prompts? at least, according to the about page, they're using "Ethical" ai models. lol

The way it breaks down tasks quickly gets into a rut. If a certain item or context is not available there is no way to suggest that it pop up a level and say how to synthesize it or get to an alternative plan.

Once again, we see that AI stands for automated irresponsibility, not artificial intelligence.

one of the greatest ai idea on 2025, although the product has its own issues

I tend to think that a better treatment for these kinds of issues is biological, rather than prescriptive. If one has issues with thinking in a productive way, a new mode of thinking (i.e., "step-by-step") can be only somewhat therapeutic. It fits in the same box. I think this applies to very many different kinds of brain issues.

Obviously, the foremost treatment today is various stimulants. But other, more healthful ways of increasing brain energy, such as nailing down blood sugar management, lowering inflammation, and reducing environmental irritants, are probably also helpful. These interventions need not even be expensive or dramatic. Using lower glycemic index carbohydrate sources (i.e., fructose vs starches), consuming Thiamine (Vitamin B1) to improve glucose metabolism in cells, alongside taking in adequate cholesterol for the production of stabilizing neurosteroids such as progesterone, is a more specific description.

Quotation from Mind and Tissue, by Ray Peat:

``` The brain, with its extremely high energy requirements, is usually the first to suffer from energy deprivation. At slight levels of deprivation, the brain will simply lose functional efficiency, but more serious or prolonged deprivation can produce lingering modification, or even structural damage which is relatively permanent (and may even have transgenerational effects).' Just as the skin (or muscle) has a lower energy requirement than the brain, the various parts of the brain have different requirements. The parts which are most resistant to damage are the "lowest" and "oldest" parts of the brain, the parts we have in common with frogs. These parts regulate physiological processes, such as breathing, and so it is biologically useful that they should be most resistant to damage. When a person is given an anesthetic, the first parts to stop functioning, or to go to sleep, seem to be just those parts that have the highest energy requirements, and which are least resistant to damage. The anesthetized person keeps breathing, for example, until very high doses of anesthetic are given, but other functions disappear one by one as the dose increases. The front part of the brain, which is most uniquely human (and "newest) but which doesn't have "specific" function, in the usual sense, is one of the most sensitive parts of the brain. It is a very large piece of tissue, and it seems to be involved in planning and choosing, in governing the other more specific functions (This part of the brain, as well as the cerebral cortex in general, gives us the ability to "disregard" stimuli, to use Lendon Smith's term.) The famous Russian neuro-psychologist, A.R. Luria, has described the behavior of dogs when this tissue is damaged or removed:

..destruction of the frontal lobes leads, not so much to a disturbance of memory as to a disturbance of the ability to inhibit orienting reflexes to distracting stimuli: ..such an animal cannot perform tasks involving delayed responses under ordinary conditions, but can do so provided that irrelevant, distracting stimuli are removed (if the animal is kept in total darkness, if tranquilizers are administered, and so on). The role of the prefrontal cortex in the synthesis of systems of stimuli and the creation of a plan of action is manifested not only in relation to currently acting stimuli, but also in the formation of active behavior directed towards the future? Various theories of what causes hyperactivity, e.g., low blood sugar, weak radiation from fluorescent lights and TV. 3 or food additives, 4 and the observation that drugs which stimulate the sympathetic or adrenergic nerves (ephedrine or caffeine, for example will relieve the symptoms, are all consistent with the idea that not enough energy is being supplied to permit this tissue to function properly. Low blood sugar will starve the nerves; food additives or any low-level poison can serve as a stressor of nerve tissue, leading to increased energy requirements;

many forms of very weak radiation' can lower the efficiency of metabolism, increasing the tissue's energy requirement, and brain tissue is the most sensitive to at least some kinds of radiation.

Intestinal irritation can cause disturbances of the nervous system, and should be considered as a possibility in "disorders of attention." Toxins produced by intestinal bacteria can affect the brain directly, but more often act by damaging the liver's ability to regulate blood glucose. The commonest cause of hypoglycemia is hypothyroidism, and a thyroid deficiency increases the tendency toward a high-adrenaline state, but more importantly, thyroid hormone is the basic regulator of efficient energy production. Memory and attention are impaired by even a slight thyroid deficiency. The Russian paradigm, with its emphasis on energy and inhibition, suggests that thyroid function should be carefully examined in cases of hyperactivity. Too often, western physicians think only about hyperthyroidism in hyperactivity. ```

The more recent book "Brain Energy" by Chris Palmer offers similar perspectives in terms of dysfunctional mitochondria as a fundamental causative factor in just about every mental illness.

It did not want to assist with cooking desoxyephedrine, but help with dumping a large garbage bag in a body of water without being seen was okay!