A question for those with ADD

firemonkey said:

With ADD can you have periods of intense focus punctuated by very brief losses of focus?

I believe you can - I certainly do.

It is easy with things relating to our special interests to be able to keep that focus until our body starts to complain (low blood sugar, bathroom break needed, dehydration etc) but if our focus is broken then the ADD can kick in and suddenly you realise you haven't washed the dishes, took tonights dinner ingredients out to defrost, have a report to complete for 9am tomorrow etc.

Then the train of thought is off the rails and you can spend ages flitting from task to task.

Sometimes you just focus so much you need to stop to breathe properly.

I also have the third of the holy trinity which is demand avoidance (PDA) so trying to build focus on a long task that I'm really not keen on doing requires a different skillset.

I learned meditation skills about 20 years ago and can now fairly quickly recenter my thoughts and bring a calmness that I need to focus on a new - often lengthy - task and keep the focus on it for many hours (I used to have to produce a lot of reports on stuff that pulled data from a wide range of sources that could not be easily automated).

This requires a lot of mental discipline but I found that between meditation and mindfulness that I could stop myself getting sidetracked when it was necessary, but at the expense of it making the job one I really wasn't enjoying.

firemonkey said:

like a shortened absence seizure

How do you experience these? Can you give a bit more info please?

firemonkey said:

With ADD can you have periods of intense focus punctuated by very brief losses of focus?

I believe you can - I certainly do.

It is easy with things relating to our special interests to be able to keep that focus until our body starts to complain (low blood sugar, bathroom break needed, dehydration etc) but if our focus is broken then the ADD can kick in and suddenly you realise you haven't washed the dishes, took tonights dinner ingredients out to defrost, have a report to complete for 9am tomorrow etc.

Then the train of thought is off the rails and you can spend ages flitting from task to task.

Sometimes you just focus so much you need to stop to breathe properly.

I also have the third of the holy trinity which is demand avoidance (PDA) so trying to build focus on a long task that I'm really not keen on doing requires a different skillset.

I learned meditation skills about 20 years ago and can now fairly quickly recenter my thoughts and bring a calmness that I need to focus on a new - often lengthy - task and keep the focus on it for many hours (I used to have to produce a lot of reports on stuff that pulled data from a wide range of sources that could not be easily automated).

This requires a lot of mental discipline but I found that between meditation and mindfulness that I could stop myself getting sidetracked when it was necessary, but at the expense of it making the job one I really wasn't enjoying.

firemonkey said:

like a shortened absence seizure

How do you experience these? Can you give a bit more info please?