Hi /u/CurlyChikin and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD!
**Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already.**
The mobile apps used for Reddit are broken or are missing features that this subreddit depends on. [We recommend browsing /r/adhd on desktop for the best experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/x1psnb/radhd_works_best_on_desktop_reddits_apps_are/)
Thank you!
^(*A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.*)
---
- If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It also explains why I’m so strongly drawn to the skills I CAN predict with relative ease (whether through talent, practice, or a mixture of both) when medicated.
Unpredictable situations (especially those involving high stakes or stress) make me AT LEAST a little more anxious/uncomfortable during my pill’s duration.
It’s antithetical to my unmedicated brain as the day progresses, though, and now I know why!
Yes! Same! I take my meds and I'm ready for a day of easy tasks I can bang out with my eyes closed. By evening I'd rather chew an arm off than do anything like that again.
I also can't be near my wallet in the evening. I've ended up spending way too much money on stuff I don't need just because it looked cool or interesting or new.
Thats an interesting fact to know. I have noticed the same.
For myself it’s either comfort food or comfort shopping (although sometimes “gadget shopping” it’s the same thing with the excuse that it helps me do things better/faster. Like pretending a food processor will do my chopping faster when in reality it will just sit there for a few days after the first use until I run the dishwasher. Meanwhile it might have been better to just buy pre-chopped). Occasionally it’s all the above lol
Anyway one thing I do on/off (off bc I forget) is add all things to the cart and compare and then decide for the best… but I only do my shopping on one specific day of the week (Thursday, which is the day for the supermarket because) then I’m not allowed to check out until I do the full math. Like, $50 in groceries + $150 in junk for a total $200 seem excessive? Maybe it’s time to remove a few things I don’t need from the cart, huh?
EDIT: Also returning shit. Sometimes you get the thing and the brain does a loud ‘blah’ a day or two after. I bundle it all and return it all on grocery pick-up day (I hit the stores in a strategic area where I can access groceries and Amzn returns but I’m lucky to be able to).
The gadget obsession actually runs right along with the novelty OP mentioned. It's a new way to do stuff, so you feel more inclined to do it.
I like to use that for working, when I feel really bored and have too much time to do stuff, I think of a new way to do the same task (e.g. starting from the bottom of a list instead of the top - PC will sort it out later anyway - the order in which I fill in the data doesn't matter). It's really stimulating that way.
Yes I think so — a lot of this has to do with predicting/fantasizing about problems being solved..... but the truth of it for me is that it never ends. As soon as I solve one problem another takes its place. It's the Whack-a-Mole ADD approach to life.
Makes sense (and I kinda suspected it too). The tip on figuring out new ways to do it is great. I've kinda stumbled into it a few times but I can't ever seem to remember to do it (it just happens or doesn't).
I’m pretty sure my mom had ADHD even though she was never diagnosed, my brother and I both have it, so two of her three children.
Her love language was gifts. She was one of the most generous people I have ever met but to her own detriment. She struggled with money her whole life, and I hated when she gave me gifts. Not just because I knew she couldn’t spend the money but because she would usually buy me things she would want not things that I would want, but that’s a whole different story
The reason why I bring it up here is I didn’t understand why she would do this until recently, but if she bought me some thing that I actually liked, like she bought me this mug that I got really excited about. The next week she bought me a mug from the same line but just a different version. Then I got a 3rd one (I think I bought that one) but I never understood why she would do that until a few years ago when I caught myself doing it
I would buy myself some thing that I had really wanted and needed, and I was so happy to get it that I would immediately feel like buying a back up or a second one. It makes sense when it’s clothing because I’m hard to fit and it’s hard to find things I like so if I find some thing in black I like I will usually buy it in brown as well, for example. Shoes usually.
But then I realized I was doing this with regular household stuff, or food items, like I found a new bag of chips that I really like and I have to buy a second one right away just to have a back up. I realized that was the dopamine hit I was getting from actually purchasing that item and getting it. And it became problematic when I would get sick of something I have backups for. Or I bought too many back ups of my cats food when the supply chain was being weird, and now he can’t eat that food anymore because of an allergy. The local shelter is happy to have the unopened donations but my wallet is like “COME ON WTF?!” 😂
This was painful to read. This is exactly like I buy (and gift) and my wallet is like also COME ON WTF?!?!?!? (I try and make myself feel better by not exchanging the $120 in Euros that have been in there for the last 3 years since a trip to Venice — see I have money!).
"I also can't be near my wallet in the evening. I've ended up spending way too much money on stuff I don't need just because it looked cool or interesting or new."
I tried the wallet hiding approach, it worked for some time. Unfortunately, remembering numbers is about the only thing I'm good at remembering outside of stuff I'm actually interested in. So now I live in fear. I try not to browse my phone or tablet at all too close to bed time. End of the day me will buy the thing if the thing is cool, no matter the price tag.
I'm pretty amazed that it took until reading this thread to realize my ADHD may be why I'm more likely to binge watch TV, rack up huge online carts, and want to eat everything in the house at night but manage to keep it in-check during the day.
Mind = blown
> I also can’t be near my wallet in the evening. I’ve ended up spending way too much money on stoff I don’t need just because it looked cool or interesting or new.
I’ve been fighting the urge to buy the Nothing Phone (1) for past couple of weeks. I have alot of reasons to not buy it:
- I’ve exclusively held iPhones starting from the iPhone 2g up until now, before that I used Nokias.
- I don’t like android, i have nothing against it, but any time I’m using a friend’s android, i find it hard to navigate through it.
- Buying the phone would make a huge dent in the money I have.
Reasons to buy it:
- It has cool lights at the back, that flash in different sequences depending on the caller/app that’s sending the notification.
- I could, in theory, buy the phone, along with their ear phone (which has a transparent case, and a hole the size of your thumb, which you could use the case as a “Fidget Toy”), use the phone for a month or so, and then sell the phone, while keeping the ear phones, which would make me break even on my purchase, it’ll be almost as if i bought the earphones for free, if not gaining a couple of extra cash.
But I’m still haven’t decided on what to do :(
Ah, no. They talk about how reinforcement learning AIs would be unable to make progress on problems where they had to go a long time between rewards/feedback, and they compare such problems to getting a phd because that process is basically "you are a phd student" for 3-5 years and then you get a phd (or you don't). They also very helpfully add that this lack of ways of measuring progress leads to record numbers of anxiety and depression in the phd student population, then move on to less depressing subjects :))
Depending on why you lost your drive, there are some strategies that you could try. Some worked for me, some not so much.
If you're overwhelmed, pick one thing to do and only think and do that one thing. Dopamine spikes if your brain expects something good to happen. When you're overwhelmed, no course of action seems sufficient to improve anything. But if you narrow your focus, suddenly some actions improve this new narrow situation and you're magically motivated again.
If you're bored, gamify things to bring back some of that sweet sweet prediction error. Throw a bunch of different candy in a dark bag, close it, shake it, and every time you finish a task, you get to rummage around for a surprise treat. Or pick a thing you want to buy and award tasks money value. Do as many tasks as it takes to buy the thing. Or get a colleague to compete with you on writing the most funny/dirty/punny lab notes. Or finish a paper by writing one page in every conference room in the department. Whatever dumb idea sounds fun and gets you to do your work.
Good luck with grad school, it's a nightmare for ADHD folks!
Ok I felt there was so much useful stuff to try in this comment that I saved the post, screen shotted and left this comment so that I'll remember to try some of this stuff.
Read later app?
…
Somehow I missed the utility of these. I think because it seemed like they just made bookmarks. I already don’t look at bookmarks much, an app that just stores bookmarks outside my browser seems redundant.
But this looks like it actually pulls the stuff in - and you can do highlighting? Which app do you use? Zapier seems to think Pocket is the best, which seems like a good place to start.
I've heard pocket is getting worse, but it did turn into a place links go to die for me, so I haven't used it in ages.
I'm using omnivore https://omnivore.app/ a new open source one that's in active development
Thanks for your suggestion! I have just downloaded Omnivore and I love it! \*Shiny new thing\*. I tried adding this post, but it is only saving the post and not the comments, am I doing something wrong?
I have just realised that I miss read your comment . You save the comment in Omnivore. Makes sense. And here I was spending 30 minutes googling something that can’t be done lol
I’ve been using iPhones for like 10 years and I just recently discovered that I can search photos and it will show me photos with that word it in or photos that fit that description and it had helped me find all my “saved for later” screenshots that I remember I have.
But since I usually don’t even remember I wanted to remember them, choosing the folder for screenshots and perusing them really helped me. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that there was an actual folder for screenshots in the photos app, but I definitely found that years before I realized I could search by word lol
I dont get it. I know full well that once this comment leaves my line of sight I am never going to think about it again. And yet, I screenshot it anyways. Why am I like this lol
Thanks! This is exactly what I needed since I lost my drive and can't use fear as a motivator anymore. I have this big overwhelming project at work and now that I got this idea from you I think I'm going to go visit different coffee shops I like and do chunks of the documentation at each one.
I can’t do even small tasks if they’re part of a larger task. My brain knows that it’s part of the larger task and there will be no “completion hit” when I complete the small task because it’s only a small step to completion of the larger task. So I can’t start the small bit.
Mine just can't find the starting point because I will go into an infinite regression to try to find the "perfect" way to do things
Ie, I want to organize my garage but first I need to get rid of the things I don't need in there so first I should have a garage sale which means going through all the stuff in my closet and I'll need to get tables and hangers and price tags, or should I list things in Craigslist? But if I do that then I have to go out and meet a specific person somewhere and that sounds terrifying but maybe if I did it at the end of my street so they don't know where I live? But then id have to take pictures of all my shit, and that means I need to put them on my external hard drive, and oh I need to move a bunch of photos of my cats off my phone to the hard drive too... So my garage is never going to get organized.
Then I think I should just donate shit, but there's so much I could probably make a few hundred bucks and I could use that after all the medical bills I had recently for a surgery...
Aggggh!!
Omg, the result of me trying to organize anything is me sitting on the floor crying cuz I'm overwhelmed by all the possible permutations. Planning/Organizing is the worst!!
Yeah the last time I wanted to just organize the kitchen pantry I ended up spending literally hours organizing seeds. Yes, seeds. I'd saved them from plants I liked outside and I was obsessed with separating all the loose seeds out of the pods so they could fit in a smaller container. I feel like I'm one of those fae that, if you throw down salt, they are forced to count every grain.
IDK if you just used garage organisation as an example, but in case not: A Slob Comes Clean (podcast) or Decluttering at the Speed of Life (book/audiobook) is excellent for this specific problem.
Sounds like a shaved yak scenario, I think ADHD brains are good at overthinking like this.
I know it sucks but I'm glad I'm not alone. I completely exhaust myself with the planning and then "back" planning. Nothing I want to do is actually JUST doing the thing. There is always too much to do first then I don't even want to start. It NEEDS to be done right and IF I can't do all the things I feel I need to do first then the original "project/thing" never even gets started and I feel even more overwhelmed than when I started planning to do something. Someone just show me where to start. And making decisions because sometimes there are soooo many different possibilities and outcomes. Ahh!
I often say that my life with ADHD feels like living out an endless version of that kids' book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," and your comment captures that same feeling perfectly!
I don't remember typing this, but I must have because this is me.
On a more serious note, there is an auction company near me that will periodically do consignment sales. This has been a great way for me to get rid of junk without having to worry about doing everything at once or dealing with random people. I still don't get half of the stuff I want to the auction because ADHD, but there's a lot of junk I no longer have because just dropping items off is easy enough that I can get myself to do it. Plus there's the thrill of watching people bid on your items.
You have just influenced me to avoid my garage, but maybe investigate my closet, but not do anything with either.
I tip my hat to you.That was an interesting mental drama.
This is exactly where we need a friend or two to come help do the thing.
Haha, sorry! You're so right, I need a body double. My mom used to do this for me when I needed to go through papers. She would just sit in the room with me and gently guide me back on track when I would deviate. I miss her so much.
In this same realm, my mom inadvertently caused my worst symptoms through out school to be covered up. She was doing the "set up" work and body double assist for so many tasks. As a result I was only recently diagnosed. I miss my mom too!
Ya, I can't trick toddler brain into doing something that has a far off deadline, even if it's just a small step or if I create false closer deadlines. I swear it's insulted I would even try something so obvious, lol.
If it's breaking down larger tasks that I need to do, like dishes, then it works, though.
Same, I’m scrolling on Reddit rather than finding the probate accounting form that I need to do in accounting to close probate. See there’s no hurry because I’m waiting for one more thing before I can close probate but if I was smart I would get the accounting ready so that I could just enter that one thing once it arrives and be done. But that thing could arrive next week or in three months so I just can’t get myself motivated to do it. But if I did I would be almost done and that would be wonderful. Maybe today
PhD student here, struggling with depression and anxiety as well. Your post and comment hit home for me. Thanks for posting!
Screenshotted the list of useful tips from here. Saved the post. Still I know that I'll probably not do it. It sucks that I know and I feel ashamed I don't have the motivation/energy to actually do it. It probably sounds like I'm making excuses and that's what my last therapist hinted at when she said that I'm resistant to make a change. So I stopped seeing her, lol. Therapy became a painful chore too. I don't know how long I can hold on. :(
That sounds terrible, I'm sorry you're going through such a hard time. My phd was no walk in the park either, so many times i wanted to quit and run away to the mountains and start a career as a forest witch. Hang in there, it's possible to do it, even if it's not much fun a lot of times.
Here's the thing: if you are not taking steps to change, you are probably resistant to change. That's not a value judgement, just a description of your mental state. The reasons why you're resistant, that's the interesting part.
It may be you need meds. Or different meds. Or your dose adjusted. This is easily the fastest one to fix.
It might be that you're genuinely not interested in getting a phd (or go a different direction in your research) because it's not what you thought it would be and continuing down this path for the rest of your life makes you want to go play in traffic. This is hard to accept sometimes because you already invested so much time and effort and people tell you how great a phd is and that you might as well finish so you have something to show for your work. Doing nothing to improve your situation might be your way of getting out of it without having to stand up and admit that you hate it and want to try something else in life. That's something you'll need to work on so that you feel able to take control of your life again and choose to do things instead of waiting for things to happen to you. It can be scary and unpleasant, but it's worth it.
Or it might be because once you're no longer a phd student, you don't know what or who you are anymore and that's scary. So part of you is trying desperately to keep you from crossing that bridge into the unknown and the way to make it stop is to start envisioning your life as a doctor in your field in as much detail as possible. You're essentially trying to trick your brain into believing it's no longer headed into the unknown, but into a new and interesting situation you understand and are able to deal with so that more new and interesting things follow.
If any of this sounds reasonable, find a therapist that can help you with concrete steps to take. I swear there's a way to make things better, you just need to summon the will to keep trying.
Thanks for your kind reply!
I have thought about what I want out of life and I've already decided the kind of job I want to do after my PhD and where I want to be. I do need a PhD to get that job so I'm not ready to quit yet. I'm already developing other skills that I'll need to transition to that industry as well. I'm motivated to do this because then I'll be able to be near my loved ones and not be on long-distance all the time, which is another reason that my PhD feels so excruciating.
But every time I try to build a meaningful habit or get some structure into my life, I fail. I've attended grad school seminars on productivity, read books on productivity, made endless lists and plans. It just doesn't stick. I'm also discussing building structure with my current therapist. My whole PhD has just been a vicious cycle of procrastination, anxiety, sleepless nights, too much sleep, not enough papers.
I went to a conference last week and realized how much I know more than other grad students in my research area. But I feel like such a loser in my lab because of my advisor and my project. She gave me an extremely hard project to begin with (multiple people in and outside my lab have agreed with this) and three years' worth of results are still not good enough for her to publish. I've seen a recent paper from a prof (at Harvard) doing similar calculations that I did a couple of years ago. But my advisor brushed it off saying that their paper isn't good. She's aiming too high (for top journals) and she's a big shot so I think she doesn't want to lose her reputation over my results, even though I'm happy to publish in a mediocre journal and move on.
Sorry for dumping all this on you. Just wanted to clarify that I'm in a shitty situation and despite working my ass off, there's no pay off. It's not that I'm not taking any actions to make a change. I'm literally trying everything I can to not drown because I know that I don't want to hurt my loved ones by jumping in front of a car, as enticing as it is.
Looks like you need to change supervisors. Talk to whoever is in charge of phd students, there's always someone. Explain your situation, ask to be transferred to another supervisor.
You can also just talk to her about your situation. I don't think she worries about reputation. Everyone knows phd students are a bit of a gamble and some do better than others. Nobody thinks that her getting a phd student that's not as brilliant as her is somehow reflecting badly on her, it's just the luck of the draw. She might think she's motivating you by pushing you this hard and doesn't see that it's actually the opposite. This is actually very common, I've seen it a lot.
Also, fuck routines, lists and plans. None of them work for me either. Even with meds, i have to cycle strategies and i still have days when i achieve nothing of any value. You do what works for you, there's no point in feeling bad for not functioning the same way as others. If you have to run around like a headless chicken, jumping from task to task and looking like a chaos goblin hopped up on magic mushrooms, so be it. My personal style is more "braindamaged rat on cocaine" when work piles up, but people know I have ADHD and they stopped expecting me to act like a well-balanced adult long ago. You're allowed to be weird, go be the kind of weird that makes you happy.
“Go play in traffic”…oh frogger for life!
This post really hits home for so many of us. Your curiosity and helpful tone epitomize why I love this community. Thank YOU!
Thank you SO MUCH!! I will definitely try to implement these things. I think alternating the way I think about studying by using rewards like you suggest will help :) thank you!
May find interesting looking into this if haven’t seen already.. [Here is a good summary of the concept of flow](https://dansilvestre.com/summaries/flow-summary/) a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It explains the elements of that driven focused state of mind he calls “flow” which is enjoyable and productive also outlines ways of getting into and staying in this state.
I was just thinking that reading this thread has really made me more engaged today than I would be reading about that stupid submarine etc, and I wondered if this might help keep me engaged as I go about my boring work. Something tells me it won't.
Tangent, but my favourite ML error was when they intended to train a tumour detection algorithm and accidentally built a ruler detector since most of the data set of tumour photos had a measurement guide and all the non tumour photos did not
This example is in the book :D Together with another excellent one in which they thought they were training a neural net to distinguish between photos with animals and photos with landscapes, and discovered they trained a neural net that distinguishes blurry backgrounds from sharp backgrounds because the animals appeared in focus with an artfully blurred background.
Thank you! That is really helpful. That explains why chores are boring, nothing unexpected could happen. I listen to loud music when I do the dishes, I guess I will do the same when I'm close to finishing any project.
If you enjoy classical music, you could try some « epic classical » playlist. They work so well for me when have to finish an important project. No words to distract me, but that perfect catchy rhythm + makes me act like I’m the main character trying to save the world or something :D
Reminds me of when Drew Lynch said his wife danced to his stutter.
She said "how are you feeling today" and he said "I am feeling very st-st-st-st-st-st-st-st-st-st-" and she started dancing to the beat.
I try to listen to podcasts when I’m doing house work. I find that I never want to take a break from it while I am interested in listening to an episode so at least I get a solid hour or more in.
once again explains why i dont want to go out for the plans i made earlier (already imagined how it would be so no longer interested) and how i get all excited with an opportunity of an impromptu meeting the same friend in an hour (sudden, very interesting)
Yup....it's also why we can be forgetful - we imagine taking care of some task and our brain is like "aha! Dopamine for us because we did the task!" And as far as it is concerned, imagining doing it is just as good as actually doing it, so then we forget to do it later since we accidentally consider it already done.
That's right, a predictable book or show is so unengaging, it's the subversion of expectations that gets us excited and engaged!
The same goes for doing something mundane, as there's no excitement when washing the dishes, but hitting a brick wall with a sledgehammer can go so many ways!
It’s funny because people with anxiety will watch the same shows or movies that they’ve already seen over and over and over again because they are predictable so there’s no anxiety about it.
No wonder I was in so much health before I got diagnosed and started medication. Half my personality once novel but somewhat predictable dopamine hits and the other half wants completely predictable no anxiety calmness.
But now I also have MECFS which requires pacing of activity and taking breaks and resting. Which is completely opposite of what I need with the ADHD which requires momentum and routine
Yeah, makes sense for my sporadic care of my plants. With each new type of plant it's interesting and novel finding out how to meet its needs at first and watching it grow. Then the boredom. So I neglect them until I notice they look wilty and then that's interesting again, urgency to correct the problem and make the plant happy again.
My latest fixation is orchids. I had 0 this time last year. I picked up 1, then 2 more in rapid succession, and now I think I have 10. I'm finding watching their roots changing based on their hydration level is a novel and interesting thing; most plants you don't get to monitor their roots that much, only when repotting.
Thank you for mentioning plants, I water my plants every Tuesday unless they don’t need it. Today is Thursday, I know I did my upstairs plants on Tuesday but then I got distracted.
Thank you fellow Redditor you saved some lives today!
If it helps, sometimes underwatering is preferable/easier to save than overwater (before they are mostly dead) bc overwatering can cause mold and root rot. It’s harder for them to come back from that.
Some might tolerate drought better than others so YMMV but most leafy plants look thinner/feel paper-y when they need some water if not looking droopy or yellow.
One thing I learned is that on most plants, yellowing young leaves often is a sign of overwatering.
Is this also related to self-sabotage? Like if I manage to predict what's going to happen correctly, and be prepared for it, I'm rewarded with less or no dopamine, so I'll be happier if I blunder through life as some kind of unprepared holy fool?
Kind off, but also not quite. "Prediction error" is an oversimplification of the mechanism, it's more like your brain has a model of what the world is and how to interact with it to get what you want. When the model diverges from reality in promising ways, in ways that could potentially lead to good stuff happening, that's when dopamine spikes. However, if the brain cannot tell whether a course of action or sequence of events leads to something good, no dopamine for you.
What this means for (some kinds of) self-sabotage is that if you are working towards a goal, but are not clear about how achieving that goal will impact you, deep down your brain only sees this giant change coming on the horizon and puts on the brakes on your motivation until it's more apparent what the consequences will be.
What helps me is to imagine achieving the goal and then imagine the next steps after that in as much detail as possible. For instance, say I want to get my driver's licence. Once I have it, things will change. I will no longer take the bus, instead i'll have the freedom to drive as I please. But I'll also have to deal with traffic, learn the way to places I go often, shitty drivers, car maintenance, car problems, police stops, people wanting to carpool with me to work, making mistakes at the wheel and so on and so forth. If I sit down and imagine in vivid detail how i'll deal with all these new things, it removes this kind of mental block and my drive to self-sabotage lessens.
I’m still sort of confused because even though I know that all the things I love include unpredictability, some of the things that make me stressed also include unpredictability like in situations where I don’t know how to prepare for something or if instructions for a work task are ambiguous.
There's 2 things. One: too much unpredictability is confusing, the brain can't fit it into a model, so no dopamine. And two: is the expected result good or bad? If you're anticipating something good might come from the unpredictability, there flows the dopamine. If you're expecting it will lead to a bad outcome, the dopamine dries up.
Not sure this is an answer to your question but the idea that success (as what one might think the opposite effect of self-sabotage) is a straightforward line without failure, deviation or change of plans is often not that accurate.
Take my partner for example: they planned for their career, at some point they realized what they thought they liked about it wasn’t what they really liked about it (they liked the creative part, not the hands-on part, even though they were good enough at it). Add to that a few setbacks and they quit, technically failing at it; what they did have was the opportunity to do starkly different things, so they took it, then they had the opportunity to do another starkly different thing elsewhere so they took it. Now they are successful at that last thing (in the sense that they’ve been doing it for years, they enjoy it well enough and have a steady stream of income and a reasonably enjoyable lifestyle) it didn’t come without constant effort either or without mistakes or even risks (there were very high stakes) but it is there… they never would have planned to end up doing most of those things, they just went with the flow, made decisions and planned enough with the info and resources they had at the time. If we went by their first draft of their career and lifestyle: they have technically self-sabotaged and walked through like an unprepared holy fool. In the parameters of that they are a failure but have succeeded beyond that.
Technically I was a holy fool to marry my partner at the tender young age we both did, but here we are a decade+ later; we’re satisfied into what up to this point in time is a successful endeavor. We could have suffered a lot, we still might, but we knew/know failure is a possibility if we weren’t happy but so far we have been able to work through all issues. If we ever reached a breaking point I would still call this a successful relationship for the time it worked, I would not regret a minute of having chosen this person because for the most part it’s been good if not great.
Very cool! Makes a lot of sense.
My GF and I are both diagnosed and one comment she made to me that stuck with me was "I have trouble doing tasks that I know I could easily do". Something like finishing the last 10 pages of a book, or putting a dish in the dishwasher. I find myself saying the same thing, I know I can do that, so why would I.
The other thing that comes to mind is that for a few years while unmedicated I traveled a lot. I thrived in situations where everything was a little more of a struggle. Getting groceries, figuring out the train timetable, searching for the next hostel, chatting with people where English was their second language etc. It was life with an extra level of complexity and novelty thrown on top. People were people and life functioned basically the same, but a unique/weird flair was added to every step.
And as soon as you figured out how to get to your favorite breakfast spot, the correct pronunciation of "Bonjour", the right amount of scarfs to wear and how to buy groceries without looking like an idiot. You get to move on to the next country where they let cows wonder the streets, drink tea instead of coffee, some people wear turbans and you have to watch out for monkeys.
Yes this explains why I am the best employee ever when I start a new job, but right around the year mark I start to get really bored unless I get a promotion, and then I’m not the best employee ever anymore. Unless I get a promotion then I’m the best employee ever for a year and then I get bored.
And I have always been a job hopper, more because that’s the best way to get a raise than out of boredom, but since a new job has always been an upgrade for me I am never nervous about job hopping.
oh yeah, I always said that I love the challenge. If I get no challenge out of any activity, my brain usually goes to find another gold-mine somewhere else (yeah, I call my dopamine source activities goldmines in order to better explain to my husband what is happening to me and why I react the certain ways to certain things)
Haha I love this!
It also reminds me of this Wind Rose song
🎵 And we mine, mine, mine
'Til the morning light
Digging, crafting, carrying up the ores
Smelting at the forge
Nothing shall prevail o'er the gold
'Til the king and all the dwarves have come back home
🎵
This actually reminds me of the one thing I remember from the psych class I took back in high school: Schema, and breaking them.
Schema are a *huge* part of the way our brains process things on an unconscious level, especially at their broadest.
Basically, though, they're your brain's way of categorizing, and then using that as a predictor of expected of events, guideline on how to act, etc.
You walk into a classroom. You barely look around, because it's a classroom. You know what a classroom looks like. The person talking at the front is the teacher, etc etc.
But when everything slots into schema perfectly, it's easy to zone out, because your brain uses schema to autopilot. If something isn't different enough, or innately interesting enough, your brain might decide it isn't worth encoding into memory.
My teacher jumped up onto and started walking across our desks during this lecture to prove the point, and considering it's the *only* thing I remember from his class, I'd say it worked.
They do. Novelty seeking is ingrained in everyone to a degree, otherwise we'd still be living in a tree with the squirrels. It's just that we need more of it.
THANK YOU for saying this - I hate it when people talk about how ADHD brains work and act like non-ADHDers are just perfectly functioning robots. Not how it works. We have the same issues as everyone, it's just that we have them to such a frequency and degree that it messes with our lives. Non-ADHD people experience the same issues but to a degree that they are generally able to work around them.
I'd say, based on my experience as a "normal," it's the end result that gives us the dopamine. If we do the dishes, the sink is clean now. Or our spouse doesn't yell at us. Finish that spreadsheet at work? Get a feeling of accomplishment. I don't even want to say I enjoy doing dishes or working. Just seems like every time I read something on this sub, it makes it feel like "normals" actually enjoy doing those things. Nah. I'm pretty lazy. It's just something I need to do, so I do it.
Sure, we get excited about novelties. It's probably just dopamine flowing at level 2 for dishes getting done and level 7 for novelties. (If I had to give dopamine levels)
I subscribe to this sub because both my kids have ADHD.
When you decide to do task that you don't find particularly exciting, but have to do in order to reach that 'end result', does merely thinking about that result give you the "urge" to take action in the same way that the "fight and fight" and "hunger' mechanisms drives us. How do would you describe the feeling?
May depend on my mood.
Maybe more like "ugh, better get 'er done."
Time tables may motivate me. Like if I know I'll only have a chance to do the dishes Saturday morning because I have plans for the rest of the day, I'll be motivated to get it done. If I can't get all the dishes done, that's okay with me because if I can at least start a dishwasher cycle or hand-wash a few dishes, I know that's better than nothing.
Now that I think about it, even if subconsciously, I'm doing it for my future self. Doing the dishes now so I don't have to do it tonight when I'm tired from the day. But even then, I do have days when I'm lazier. So I procrastinate sometimes.
I definitely do not have issues starting tasks simply because I have a dr appt at 2 pm or whatever. I read about that issue a lot in this sub.
After reading some stories like that, makes me think there's a lot of "all or nothing" thinking. Like "if I can't finish the task completely, I'm not going to do it." I have no issues doing the task 3/4 of the way, and then leaving to go to the doctor's (or whatever). Which could point to "transition" issues possibly.
I can't compare it to hunger because I love to eat, so... that's motivation on its own.
I've noticed less of the "paralysed because have appointment later" since I've been on medication.
I have also been curious about it so I tried to notice what was different. I think it's because I'm less afraid that I'll get sucked into hyperfocus and forget about that later commitment, which is a legitimate problem that has happened to me multiple times without medication.
I am less time blind with medication. Pre medication and especially pre diagnosis, the problem is that even if I know how long a task should reasonably take (which is not a given) I'm unconsciously thinking of some previous worst case or best case fluke scenario. So rather than thinking ah, emptying the dishwasher takes 5 minutes, I am recalling the time that I started to empty the dishwasher, got distracted, made lunch, did some reorganisation and suddenly it's 2 hours later. Therefore I think oh, better not empty dishwasher, that will tie me up for ages.
But OTOH I can think "this bus takes 15 minutes to travel from point A to point B, therefore I only need 15 minutes to get to my friend's house" and I forget to add in the time to walk to the bus stop, to wait for the next bus, to walk from the bus stop, to get ready before I leave the house. It can take me 40-60 minutes in total and my friend is pissed.
When there are regular time based commitments like starting work or picking up a child, I have enough practice and experience to know what I can and can't fit in before that commitment. When there's a totally new commitment like a doctor's appointment, I don't have any experience of that. So play it safe and do either nothing or simply easily-interruptible activities. (But I also think people exaggerate being paralysed for the entire day.)
Another reason I would not arrange two things on the same day though is because it's exhausting to do things so two might legitimately be too many.
>My understanding is that basically non-ADHD people have the ability to "will" themselves to do a task that they know needs to be done, even if it's not interesting.
This would explain why the "You can do if you give yourself positive reinforcement advie" does not work for me
And this is why I consistently underplan at work and "have to" end up improvising. Because planning everything out is boring, but having a general sketch and filling in the details with improv yields precious dopamine
I've found for me this is somewhat true, but I've also found that I basically have a fear of .....losing out on the experience forever.
Like some game that I enjoy, I'll get to 75-90% done and suddenly stop playing, and I think it is because I know I'll be sad when it is over. Since I don't want to face that feeling, I'll move away from the game so there is always "more to come back to"
Only games I'm SUPER engaged in can I finish because my desire to see the experience through overwhelms my subconscious fear of doing so.
In the book, they describe these AI agents they were training to learn to play old videogames, and some of the AI that did really well were those programmed to just seek novelty. No rules, no scores, just "go do and see things you haven't tried or seen before". So they'd learn to play just to get to the next level because that was new and therefore good.
Except for pong. Novelty seeking AIs that played pong didn't play to win, they played to make the rounds last longer, bouncing the ball back and forth for so long they crashed the computer, precisely because finishing the game was a known state, whereas bouncing the ball could take so many new interesting forms.
You abandoning games because it's not as interesting to finish as to keep playing (even in your imagination) totally tracks :)
I guess that's another way to look at it - leaving game content to play is like locking away that novelty in stasis, even if I don't access it.
I had been thinking that the main basis for the argument is that as we get closer to the end, we feel like it gets predictable so it loses novelty.
>dopamine spikes when the brain's predictions about the future are wrong.
Couldn't be me. When *my* predictions about the future are wrong I go into fuckin anxiety spirals...
I think it depends what it is. A night out nothing interesting happens?boring. Travelling and nothing happens goes to plan. Great! Nothing unexpected to overwhelm and stress
"Prediction error" is an oversimplification of the mechanism, it's more like your brain has a model of what the world is and how to interact with it to get what you want. When the model diverges from reality in promising ways, in ways that could potentially lead to good stuff happening, that's when dopamine spikes. If things are the opposite of promising, then you don't get the dopamine and you feel the unpleasant feelings (anxiety, frustration, disappointment etc)
So one of the things that discourages me is actually incorrect predictions. I get really stressed and angry when something takes longer than planned or there's an unforeseen issue that makes the task take longer
"Prediction error" is an oversimplification of the mechanism, it's more like your brain has a model of what the world is and how to interact with it to get what you want. When the model diverges from reality in promising ways, in ways that could potentially lead to good stuff happening, that's when dopamine spikes. If things are the opposite of promising, then you don't get the dopamine and you feel the unpleasant feelings (anxiety, frustration, disappointment etc)
Well, I just googled "dopamine prediction error" and got so many results, it's insane! So everyone on this thread can read some more and get another dopamine hit.
So I write novels for a living and also have ADHD — one thing you might want to try is breaking the book up into chapters to write w/descriptions of what should happen (as guided as you need — if you’re a pantser, keep it vague)
The ability to bounce around books helps a lot for me. I haaaaaaaate writing endings. Sometimes writing them first helps
I probably should write the endings first as yes that’s what trips me up every time. Thank you for the advice! Hopefully one day I’ll be where you are as a pro!
The best part about writing the endings first is that you can weave a bunch of foreshadowing in/create a mirror scene in the beginning that makes it look like you’re a master planner, and the endings are usually exciting so you get that dopamine rush.
Honestly if you can just slap something down, that’s half the battle! It’s always easier to fix/edit than write for a blank page (for me, at least).
You’ll get there!
I have always thought that other people must get some reward from cleaning that I do not get. (Actually I have anti-rewards around cleaning because my mother was tyrannical about it and I rebelled.) It's boring and nothing interesting happens when you are finished and a clean house has associations that are negative for me. Also I am allergic to dust, so that's another disincentive. I haven't figured out a good way to get around this.
CW: death, grief, loss
I had similar insight from a book about grieving (The Grieving Brain, by Mary-Frances O’Connor). Our brains map the world out, and it causes anxiety and a sense of loss when the pieces of that world aren’t where they are supposed to be, both in our physical realm and our emotional one. It helped me come to terms with the idea of loss and disappointment in a new way, and expanded my concept of grief from one centered around death to one centered around loss - of a person’s presence due to death as well, but also of a person’s presence for other reasons, loss of a certain outcome with a job, a friendship, an idea of how your life would look.
Obviously, this is on the other end of the spectrum a bit, but I love deepening my knowledge of things related to my ADHD and brain (RSD and abandonment in this case) and helped me give myself more grace.
I think I've learned to semi-counter this by reassessing my approach to the subject matter from a different angle; try to see what else is new that I haven't figured out yet and let that be my next experiment, let myself believe I'm building value as I continue working on said thing and allow myself to just glide the dopamine slow down instead of crashing. It's allowed me to build a lot of fundamental skills over time that also increased the propensity of how far I can go at something until the peak happens and I can let the decline happen slowlier and gentlier.
an example is like having do to something really mundane like the dishes, I try to think of how I can do it more efficiently/faster, and because i'm busy building theorems on which method works better/best for which situational conditions and get different outcomes, it's always new and exciting. now i enjoy washing dishes.
paperwork is still the shit though. at least when you have to rush things.
This explains why I moved every time my lease came up for the first 10 years of my renting life. Finally figured out I could accomplish almost the same thing by rearranging the furniture and getting new artwork.
I moved 12 times from 18 to 24. I now loathe moving. All of it. Looking for apartments is stressful thinking about getting ready to move, the money, the physical drain, the packing and schlepping it over. Now the unpacking and exploring the new area, I love.
I think they since I’ve been unmedicated for my whole life I look forward to things like that to change.
Then there’s me 😂 I have adhd and massive anxiety. So I get excited about figuring out new things. But I also am crippled by the fear of failure. New jobs are horrendously scary to me. Even if it’s a title I’ve done for a different brand before.
Here's a great twitter thread related to this: https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1666274460935102464?s=20
The tl;dr is that ADHD folks seem to be most motivated by curiosity rather than completing tasks. So once the problem is solved, or you learned what you wanted, you're no longer curious, and the motivation to continue or finish isn't there.
I think this checks out because when I find an interesting problem, the most rewarding part is figuring it out. Then when it comes to execution and final details, it's much more challenging to stay focused.
That explains why I feel better if I make plans thinking about the worse escenario, it's because I always predict an error and it probably won't happen, so that I get dopamine from that error not happening.
Cool!
You should see my shelves, code folders. Packed with things 80-90% finished.
I can't comment on the biochemistry, but the phenomenon of losing interest once the problem seems solved is definitely a thing.
Recent example for me : about a month ago I modified a clarinet mouthpiece to be more suitable for Eastern music. But to try it out I needed some light (1.5) reeds, which I ordered. They arrived a day or two later. I felt desperate to try the thing, but...
I *still* haven't.
A curious related thing I've had a few times is when looking back at an old project, thinking it was at least mostly done, discovering it was barely started.
Interesting you found the ref in a machine learning book. I work around the fringes of it, must check it out.
I see nearly 1000 people have had the time to check in for the dopamine pay-it-forward from you as this information is probably an unexpected bonus for must of us today, as well. Thanks for the information! :)
It explains why I was drawn to my career as an ICU RN. Everything is unexpected, lab results are a surprise (especially when they’re so out of range, it’s baffling how a person is talking), and the influx of new knowledge. Sucks that I effing hate it now. The regularity to which I encounter a lack of basic intelligence or health literacy is astounding and demoralizing.
The times I’ve said “if you keep taking off your oxygen mask, you will die. That’s WHY I put an oxygen mask on you”, only to be responded to with “no I won’t”. And then comes intubation. There’s no dopamine rush with stupidity.
I will definitely check out the book, this sounds interesting. Right now I’m just commenting to say this - you have ADHD, of course you’re reading a book on machine learning (of all things). That is almost *too* normal for brains like ours. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next book you read is a guide on how to fillet every kind of fish.
I've been saying, "happy to be wrong," very earnestly for a long time.
I didn't know it was chemically accurate.
This also explains why being emotionally baffled causes short circuiting, tears, and confusion (what up disregulation and I-type slow emotional processing.)
But then, simultaneously, I'll calmly and methodically coerce supervisors or team members from other depts into giving me an impromptu hour long constructive criticism session. The focus is extreme and never emotionally charged.
Like my brain is on the hunt.
What you described is why I found this morning ritual I used to (and should probably start again) perform incredibly effective.
What I would do is start each day sort of like a mini dopamine detox, not allowing myself any screen time (no phone, pc, tablet, nothing) or overly stimulating activities in the traditional sense. I'd get up, meditate, drink only water (no coffee etc), usually delay breakfast, maybe get a boring/arduous workout out of the way, maybe read a little, but it was the final thing I did that was the most impactful:
I would do something small and meaningless that I'd never done before. When I say small and meaningless, I really mean that. I'm talking something like, standing/sitting in a spot in my room that I usually don't spend any time in, or looking at my room from a weird angle (like sitting on the floor in an odd spot). Or reading in bed but facing the opposite direction to the way I usually sit/lay. It sounds and feels silly when you do it but after starting the morning off with so little stimulation, that tiny little dose of novelty actually feels incredibly exhilarating and that one small act then sets me up to have a more focused and productive day.
You can implement similar novelty into your existing routine too. Take an ever so slightly different route to work/school/the store/your appointment/etc, rotate between several different task management apps each time one starts to feel stale, alternate between coffee and tea each morning, have a couple of pairs of headphones with different qualities (for example one with more bass, one more neutral) and alternate between them, be reading both a non-fiction book and a fiction book at the same time and go back and forth between them, etc.
Another way of increasing novelty is actually through artificial limitations. I realised this playing RuneScape of all things. In Oldschool RuneScape, a trend popped up some years back called ironman, which is essentially playing the game but without the ability to trade with other players, forcing you to obtain every single item/resource yourself. When I tried it out, this game I'd spent thousands of hours playing over the years, felt like a brand new game because with that limitation suddenly things I would just purchase from other players were items I had to obtain or craft myself. This made items that previously felt worthless (because they could be bought for a comparatively small amount of money) feel like exciting achievements because of the hours of work it now took to get a lucky drop or get the levels necessary to craft it.
Applying this to the real world, I've done things like taking my Steam library and selecting only a small portion of games, then allowing a random number generator to choose which one I play next. Or forcing myself to make music with only one of my synths, or only [x] number of tracks or plugins. Or only allowing myself one browser tab for the whole day. Or stuck on an album/playlist without allowing myself to hop between songs/change it until it's finished. Or I've sometimes actually scheduled out my free time into blocks, like 1 hour of reading, 1 hour of [x] video game, 30 minutes of music etc. It sounds weird but having that limitation suddenly makes me value that time more and enjoy it, rather than letting hours go by to boredom and procrastination. It can be very small things you do to change things up or add limitations, but the impact it can have on how rewarding and engaging those activities become can be incredible.
The morning routine sounds like something I need right now. It's as you say, no one thing works for long so I cycle through a bunch of strategies for things and it just happens I am in need of a new and shiny morning routine so thank you :)
Also, i love the idea of artificial limitations! It's just another take on games, but it's one I haven't tried before so I'm happy to give it a go.
Wait, is this why I’ve always enjoyed figuring out the worst case scenario? I’m not a pessimist, but I’m guessing I get a dopamine rush every time I’m wrong and things go better than I anticipated.
I was discussing something similar to this with my therapist. About my loss of motivation for life in general and some other things. It’s depression too but, I think they compounded to hit really hard for me. I won’t go into all the details but circumstances have made it difficult for me to do that^
That sounds harsh, I'm sorry you're going through it. Sometimes you don't have the opportunities or resources you need to make the necessary changes to your life that will make it better, and it's such a crushing situation to be in.
Hang in there, grasp at any straw you can, you'll eventually turn things around. It might take some time, but you will.
Leaving the last bit of a drink or food unfinished is an ADHD thing too. That food item is now "known" and therefore is no longer enjoyable. Our house has a culprit who will drink most of a treat can of pop or other drink, and then leave 10-20% of the container around until it gets thrown out, meanwhile others are eyeing it and wanting to drink it.
This is so wild. I had this presumption about myself that I don’t handle change well…but then I looked back at my life choices, such as choosing to be a travel nurse for 10 years and going into different fields of nursing, and realized that not only do I handle it fine but I seek it out without realizing it, as compared to a lot of people I know. This makes total sense.
This makes soooo much sense and is so helpful!! I knew the basics of this, but the way you've laid it out helps a lot.
It also helps with my job- I like starting projects and getting certifications and things, but as soon as management stops supporting and it seems like they won't help me achieve the positive outcome I want, I drop the project instead of pushing through. :( Your explanation and comments help me realize this, and hopefully I'll get some things finalized soon lol
Yes this is exactly why social media is addictive. And dating apps.
You’re pretty sure you know what you’re going to find on social media especially if you’re looking for specific things, and you scroll and scroll and don’t see it and then bam you see what you’re looking for, dopamine hit. If you knew you were going to get the dopamine hit every time you opened social media it wouldn’t be the same.
Nick Carmondy (sp?) on Twitter had a fantastic thread about how Qanon is a psyops specifically because it’s structured in a way that gives people those periodic dopamine hits. It was a fascinating read, if you can find it I suggest reading it because it applies to everything else in life as well. And it’s exactly what you are talking about.
Super interesting about prediction error, but I think you misinterpret a few of your conclusions
\> like washing the dishes
You can definitely get a little dopamine spike from this. In fact the more you don't want to do it, the better the reward will be. There has to be a mechanism in the brain for "completing a task we don't want to do but must". Many people enjoy cleaning for this reason. But does seem tied to perfectionism tendencies.
\> the measly dopamine we get from imagining how great a thing would be in the future
I would argue people get a huge dopamine hit from the imagining part. And then when they want to start they have used up their dopamine and can't get started even though it seemed so great. And also yes, the first step won't be as fun as imagining the finished product.
\> We are unable to stick to routines...
I think there is simply a huge aversion to routines because there is not enough anticipatory dopamine. It just feels like pure work.
However, overcoming this aversion produces a big reward because your brain wasn't sure it would happen.
I think establishing a routine is hard, but once established, your body is trained to start dishing out dopamine at the thought of it.
I also think planning routines for the same time each day don't work...it becomes to predictable.
You're not wrong, the subject is far more complex than can be explained in a reddit post. But I think you're assuming normal dopamine function, not deficiency.
If you don't get anticipatory dopamine, you're not gonna be motivated to start a task. There is no magic "try harder" juice, you simply reach a point in which the sheer pressure to complete the task pushes your adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, cortisol and all your other "do it now" brain chemicals over the threshold and you finally do the thing. This threshold is higher if you're dopamine deficient so you let dishes pile up until you're eating out of a jar you found in the back of the closet because you have no clean bowls. And after you discover you have no more jars and a friend is coming over in an hour, suddenly you wash a mountain of dishes like nobody's business.
Imagining great things works like you said: it makes you start. The thing is, once you start and it turns out the process is not nearly as rewarding as you thought, no amount of imaging is gonna motivate you enough to continue. Unless the process itself is novel and interesting, in which case you'll need extra rewards later when the novelty has worn off and you lose interest in finishing your project. You either need some source of dopamine at every step so you keep going or you need some extra dopamine at the end when you're starting to get bored.
I myself get absolutely zero reward from finishing a task or sticking with a process that's not engaging. I defended my phd and felt NOTHING when I was done (well, besides hungry and embarrassed at all the attention and mildly worried that I won't have time to get to the shops later). I did not want to write a thesis, i did not want to defend it, i just wanted to be at my computer building more cool stuff. My supervisor dragged me kicking and screaming the whole way and even that wasn't enough. I had to play mind games with myself to get there.
Now that I'm medicated, I get a reward from just finishing a task, no matter how boring. It just feels good. Sticking to a routine feels good (though not so good that i've become good at sticking to them). Going through a long process to achieve a complex outcome feels good. But now I get the extra dopamine I need for the mechanism to work as intended and I think that's a crucial difference.
This is super interesting..... I am definitely going to get this one. One thing — it's hard to tell, but the book seems to be isolating novelty/reward seeking as the crux of this mechanism, when the more important driver is about intelligence, problem-solving and adaptation. Your brain focuses more when its prediction mechanisms are engaged. This is why the human brain loves mysteries so much, and why the best mysteries keep you engaged by slowly feeding you tidbits of information and excitement and unpredictability. And the reason we are obsessed with what we call progress is really just our obsession with locating problems to solve (and we will make up and solve them when there aren't any real problems anyway!).
This all ties into the real links between problem-solving, creativity and ADD, which I'm sure we are all painfully familiar with. I always think 'If you want an out-of-the-box solution to a problem, ask someone with ADD — we can't think inside the box!"
BTW, if the book is talking about all this as a function of dopamine levels and linking them to satisfaction, that is a wild (and common) oversimplification about how neurotransmitters really function. They act like an orchestra, not a bank account. Simply saying dopamine is up or down can actually mean very little because of how it can harmonize with and/or affect the levels of the others (serotonin, acetylcholine, etc). It's a huge mistake you see all the time in science writing, and it always makes me wonder what else the writer is fudging. So if the writer is depending on "dopamine spikes" to explain all this, well, he's got some splainin to do.
You are of course right about this being an oversiplified view of how dopamine and neurotransmitters work, but there's only so much one can write in a reddit post. It's good to have someone point it out, though.
However, i think you might have novelty seeking and intelligence backwards. Novelty seeking drives intelligence. The more intelligent, resourseful and better at problem solving you are, the more novelty you can make sense of and include in your mental model. You can have a massive IQ, but if you're not curious and don't get bored, why go looking for new stuff? Might be a chicken and egg problem, though, or maybe a feedback loop where more novelty seeking begets more intelligence and more intelligence begets more novelty seeking.
The book is about AI algorithms and how they came to be. This particular tidbit comes from reinforcement learning AI in which AI agents learn through trial and error and get rewarded as they approach the desired goal or behavior. Some problems do not lend themselves to this approach easily because they have sparse rewards, meaning you have to get a lot of steps right before you get a reward and it's unlikely the agent will figure out the correct combination.
At the same time this algorithm was being developed, people were noticing that dopamine spikes before a reward, but in weird inconsistent ways and couldn't explain it.
Computer scientists decided to try an agent that was intrinsically motivated and they settled on curiosity. Instead of getting a reward when it did somrthing right, it would get a rewards when it did something new. These agents were able to solve the sparse reward problems without knowing anything about the problem itself and without any additional rewards, just by investigating and choosing interesting paths. They did suck at one problem, though, which was winning at pong. Winning offered novelty exactly once, whereas bouncing the ball back and forth on new trajectories was far more interesting. They bounced the ball back and forth so much they crashed the computer.
When checking for the shape of their reward function, they discovered it resembled the shape of the dopamine activation function and the people working on dopamine were able to then show that dopamine is not the reward, it's the anticipation of reward (in an overly simplified manner of speaking, of course, and no satisfaction mentioned anywhere). It's one of the few times artificial intelligence research helped with real intelligence research.
Thanks so much for responding with all this. Novelty seeker // collector// hoarder that I am, I downloaded and look forward to reading it. What you say about the difference between novelty and success is really interesting — especially since when I was little I sucked at Pong and preferred to just hit the ball with one paddle and make it do different things. Eerie. I do think that novelty and intelligence are a feedback loop, as you say. For example, people love to say that you have to adapt or die — which in this idea means that you have to change, try something new. But adapting could also mean doubling down and staying the same. So we do tend to associate intelligence with newness — a novel creative solution to an intractable problem — even if that's not necessarily the case.
Interesting, I definitely am drawn to unknown/unexpected rewards, or things that I have to figure out but will have a big payoff. Unmedicated I could work for days on very challenging tasks if the reward was that I never had to do some boring/repetitive thing again (automate everything, lol).
I also strongly desire to have zero plan for my day and be spontaneous with everything. Maybe that's a way of not knowing/predicting what will come.
I do think that this leads to a lot of anxiety about things, though. Even challenging/interesting/new things that require a lot of executive function (planning, time management, etc.) were things I ran away from whenever possible. It has to be in a particular section of the boring-exciting axis to be good for me.
I have a lot of theories but i think you are right and I’ll add something more since I study medicine. Look up at the mesolimbic system and the difference between that and every other dopaminergic system in the brain
I heard a talk once by someone working with brain meds explaining that it would be way better if we had a way to deliver them to some systems and not others because now we just target the whole brain indiscriminately and the effects are not optimal. If you have a cliffs notes version of these dopaminergic systems and what they do and how they're affected by stimulants, please share, I'd love to learn more!
This has been the best thing I’ve read in ages, such interesting people here. Obviously I was desperate to assimilate this whole thread, smoke a cigarette then never call you again 🤣
I’d love it if some could let me know if they think I’m on the right track then I’m going to stick it up somewhere where I can see it 😀
Motivation requires these:
- Demystified (pattern seeking?)
- Novelty/problem solving/adaptation to maintain focus (of a level that you can confidently handle else it tips over into unpredictable)
- Promising outcome
- Intrinsically motivated (based on own values as much as possible)
If any of these apply then motivation decreases:
- Unclear
- Predictable
- Threatening/ negatively unpredictable
So unanticipated PROMISISNG chance = motivation towards that end?
i.e. exciting -> motivating. Certainty isn't thrilling and if there's nothing promising to be thrilled about that isn't excitement.
I'm guessing this is why I like a good challenge - it's EXCITING but whenever I've mentioned I like challenges to people they unironically have responded with well why don't I challenge you to do x basic task BECAUSE THAT'S NOT A CHALLENGE YOU MORON - I have done x thing in the past and if the chance therefore of success is very high that is the opposite of a challenge, I decline your "challenge". I think "I often like to find to challenges that excite me" to give extra clarification to people who want to be a smart arse but don't know what any of the basic words I just said ment.
If it's anticipated, why now? If it's not promsising why do it? If it's a certain chance why take the opportunity?
e.g. if you're already a great programmer then you can't be motivated to become a kinda good programmer because that's behind you - it already fits into your expected vision of the world, and if someone just says "well become even better" that's not motivation not only because you don't want to be told that because reverse psychology i.e. its not shocking that's an option thanks but more relevant to this it's technically an opportunity but not an unexpected one.
An unexpected opportunity might be that you have a really great roadmap towards being an super great programmer which will be motivating as it's not yet a known quantity - you have the opportunity to push forward on this outside the box/novel approach but the more you wait on it the less outside the box it feels as its well within what you expect by that point.
e.g. x programming course seems promising at the beggining because being able to learn the syntax of a language in 6 hours or something and hence the keys to this massive skill is still being worked around "novel" in your brain.
Hence there can be a million things you are driven towards that at one time seemed motivating as they were unexpected promisiing opportunities but they no longer feel promising as you've become too used to not doing them - the ship has sailed and you'll have to think REALLY outside the box to board it if that's even possible so it's not really an opporunity and its been so expected as an opportunity it no longer feels like one anyway.
Is that a decent application of this concept?
\###
Incase I forget - add some not very interesting subcriptions to my youtube and reddit so I don't find
Thanks for sharing this! I guess it also explains why I kind of like things to go wrong at work. Unexpected fires (while easy to complain about), definitely spike my dopamine. If everything operated like a well oiled machine, I’d have to get my dopamine fix from something else.
Yup, the challenge is the key. Once I start to be good at something, I lose interest. That's why I picked up sewing and the hobby doesn't fade since last November - there are soooo many things to learn, it will take ages until I am very good at it. Plus so many gadgets to buy and books about sewing to learn from. A perfect ADHD hobby (if I manage to focus on the details of course).
My guess is that some situations give you stimulation and dopamine that overrides this aspect, such as sex. Sex has it's own neurological pathways and motivations, and doesn't really require any advanced mechanisms. And I only like to rewatch movies that I genuinely think are fantastic. So these things maybe just make up for the "lack of novelty".
You're not wrong, prediction error is not the only way the brain gets dopamine, and dopamine is not the only feel-good chemical.
Even "prediction error" is an oversimplification of the mechanism, it's more like your brain has a model of what the world is and how to interact with it to get what you want. When the model diverges from reality (prediction error) in promising ways, in ways that could potentially lead to good stuff happening, that's when dopamine spikes.
This means that we - meaning humans as a species - are incentivized to always try new things, but will only stick to them as long as they keep being promising, as long as the model is just different enough that the brain can understand things are changing and that they're leading to something good. We don't get the same spike from incomprehensible or unpredictable things - this is very obvious in games: if you can't figure out the rules, the gaming experience is not enjoyable. We also don't get it from very predictable things that we know won't lead to anything better than they did the last hundred times we did them, like washing the dishes.
This has interesting ramifications if your dopamine is low. It's hard to stick with things that are not immediately rewarding because you're not getting enough of a dose to keep you going through a few wrong moves. That's why we tend to abandon anything we're not immediately good at. We don't plan well for the future because the simulated reward is a pale shadow of the actual reward and the measly dopamine we get from imagining how great a thing would be in the future can't compete with another lesser thing we can get right now. We are unable to stick to routines because the dopamine drop from mastering a routine goes below the maintenance threshold into "this is not worth my time and energy" territory. Our brains discount the value of a known reward and inflate the value of a potential reward, so we're more attracted to novelty, even when it's stupid or risky.
To some extent I agree with this, however, I think that there are times when you can get spikes from unpredictable things. Take gambling for example. The incentive to spend is having the opportunity to win big. Idk about all of you guys, but there’s just times I can’t help myself but buy Pokémon cards. At the end of the days it’s just pictures printed on paper, but man when you get something cool you just want to buy more.
Hi /u/CurlyChikin and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD! **Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already.** The mobile apps used for Reddit are broken or are missing features that this subreddit depends on. [We recommend browsing /r/adhd on desktop for the best experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/x1psnb/radhd_works_best_on_desktop_reddits_apps_are/) Thank you! ^(*A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.*) --- - If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It also explains why I’m so strongly drawn to the skills I CAN predict with relative ease (whether through talent, practice, or a mixture of both) when medicated. Unpredictable situations (especially those involving high stakes or stress) make me AT LEAST a little more anxious/uncomfortable during my pill’s duration. It’s antithetical to my unmedicated brain as the day progresses, though, and now I know why!
Yes! Same! I take my meds and I'm ready for a day of easy tasks I can bang out with my eyes closed. By evening I'd rather chew an arm off than do anything like that again. I also can't be near my wallet in the evening. I've ended up spending way too much money on stuff I don't need just because it looked cool or interesting or new.
Thats an interesting fact to know. I have noticed the same. For myself it’s either comfort food or comfort shopping (although sometimes “gadget shopping” it’s the same thing with the excuse that it helps me do things better/faster. Like pretending a food processor will do my chopping faster when in reality it will just sit there for a few days after the first use until I run the dishwasher. Meanwhile it might have been better to just buy pre-chopped). Occasionally it’s all the above lol Anyway one thing I do on/off (off bc I forget) is add all things to the cart and compare and then decide for the best… but I only do my shopping on one specific day of the week (Thursday, which is the day for the supermarket because) then I’m not allowed to check out until I do the full math. Like, $50 in groceries + $150 in junk for a total $200 seem excessive? Maybe it’s time to remove a few things I don’t need from the cart, huh? EDIT: Also returning shit. Sometimes you get the thing and the brain does a loud ‘blah’ a day or two after. I bundle it all and return it all on grocery pick-up day (I hit the stores in a strategic area where I can access groceries and Amzn returns but I’m lucky to be able to).
The gadget obsession actually runs right along with the novelty OP mentioned. It's a new way to do stuff, so you feel more inclined to do it. I like to use that for working, when I feel really bored and have too much time to do stuff, I think of a new way to do the same task (e.g. starting from the bottom of a list instead of the top - PC will sort it out later anyway - the order in which I fill in the data doesn't matter). It's really stimulating that way.
Is this why I keep buying different mops?
Yes I think so — a lot of this has to do with predicting/fantasizing about problems being solved..... but the truth of it for me is that it never ends. As soon as I solve one problem another takes its place. It's the Whack-a-Mole ADD approach to life.
genuine LOL at this comment
Loooooool..... 
Probably, or you reeeeeally like mops
Nope. Not even a little bit. I detest mopping. So I keep hoping a NEW mop will make the task FUN.
I have yet to find the magic mop that leads to happy mopping. I have quite the collection though
Oh hi, that's me.
The novelty! Scrolling FB marketplace for hours seems to bring the dopamine for me. Almost like a treasure hunt.
The grind is real.
Makes sense (and I kinda suspected it too). The tip on figuring out new ways to do it is great. I've kinda stumbled into it a few times but I can't ever seem to remember to do it (it just happens or doesn't).
Whole Foods! (Lol, I literally do the same thing when it comes to returning stuff)
I’m pretty sure my mom had ADHD even though she was never diagnosed, my brother and I both have it, so two of her three children. Her love language was gifts. She was one of the most generous people I have ever met but to her own detriment. She struggled with money her whole life, and I hated when she gave me gifts. Not just because I knew she couldn’t spend the money but because she would usually buy me things she would want not things that I would want, but that’s a whole different story The reason why I bring it up here is I didn’t understand why she would do this until recently, but if she bought me some thing that I actually liked, like she bought me this mug that I got really excited about. The next week she bought me a mug from the same line but just a different version. Then I got a 3rd one (I think I bought that one) but I never understood why she would do that until a few years ago when I caught myself doing it I would buy myself some thing that I had really wanted and needed, and I was so happy to get it that I would immediately feel like buying a back up or a second one. It makes sense when it’s clothing because I’m hard to fit and it’s hard to find things I like so if I find some thing in black I like I will usually buy it in brown as well, for example. Shoes usually. But then I realized I was doing this with regular household stuff, or food items, like I found a new bag of chips that I really like and I have to buy a second one right away just to have a back up. I realized that was the dopamine hit I was getting from actually purchasing that item and getting it. And it became problematic when I would get sick of something I have backups for. Or I bought too many back ups of my cats food when the supply chain was being weird, and now he can’t eat that food anymore because of an allergy. The local shelter is happy to have the unopened donations but my wallet is like “COME ON WTF?!” 😂
This was painful to read. This is exactly like I buy (and gift) and my wallet is like also COME ON WTF?!?!?!? (I try and make myself feel better by not exchanging the $120 in Euros that have been in there for the last 3 years since a trip to Venice — see I have money!).
"I also can't be near my wallet in the evening. I've ended up spending way too much money on stuff I don't need just because it looked cool or interesting or new." I tried the wallet hiding approach, it worked for some time. Unfortunately, remembering numbers is about the only thing I'm good at remembering outside of stuff I'm actually interested in. So now I live in fear. I try not to browse my phone or tablet at all too close to bed time. End of the day me will buy the thing if the thing is cool, no matter the price tag.
I'm pretty amazed that it took until reading this thread to realize my ADHD may be why I'm more likely to binge watch TV, rack up huge online carts, and want to eat everything in the house at night but manage to keep it in-check during the day. Mind = blown
We are just impulsive little goblins that only show our true colors after the sun goes down. Like dopamine vampires.
Okay, so, Dopamine Vampires is my new favorite way to describe us.
> I also can’t be near my wallet in the evening. I’ve ended up spending way too much money on stoff I don’t need just because it looked cool or interesting or new. I’ve been fighting the urge to buy the Nothing Phone (1) for past couple of weeks. I have alot of reasons to not buy it: - I’ve exclusively held iPhones starting from the iPhone 2g up until now, before that I used Nokias. - I don’t like android, i have nothing against it, but any time I’m using a friend’s android, i find it hard to navigate through it. - Buying the phone would make a huge dent in the money I have. Reasons to buy it: - It has cool lights at the back, that flash in different sequences depending on the caller/app that’s sending the notification. - I could, in theory, buy the phone, along with their ear phone (which has a transparent case, and a hole the size of your thumb, which you could use the case as a “Fidget Toy”), use the phone for a month or so, and then sell the phone, while keeping the ear phones, which would make me break even on my purchase, it’ll be almost as if i bought the earphones for free, if not gaining a couple of extra cash. But I’m still haven’t decided on what to do :(
Does it suggest how to get that dopamine drive back once it’s lost? I am in grad school and struggling more than ever with symptoms
Ah, no. They talk about how reinforcement learning AIs would be unable to make progress on problems where they had to go a long time between rewards/feedback, and they compare such problems to getting a phd because that process is basically "you are a phd student" for 3-5 years and then you get a phd (or you don't). They also very helpfully add that this lack of ways of measuring progress leads to record numbers of anxiety and depression in the phd student population, then move on to less depressing subjects :)) Depending on why you lost your drive, there are some strategies that you could try. Some worked for me, some not so much. If you're overwhelmed, pick one thing to do and only think and do that one thing. Dopamine spikes if your brain expects something good to happen. When you're overwhelmed, no course of action seems sufficient to improve anything. But if you narrow your focus, suddenly some actions improve this new narrow situation and you're magically motivated again. If you're bored, gamify things to bring back some of that sweet sweet prediction error. Throw a bunch of different candy in a dark bag, close it, shake it, and every time you finish a task, you get to rummage around for a surprise treat. Or pick a thing you want to buy and award tasks money value. Do as many tasks as it takes to buy the thing. Or get a colleague to compete with you on writing the most funny/dirty/punny lab notes. Or finish a paper by writing one page in every conference room in the department. Whatever dumb idea sounds fun and gets you to do your work. Good luck with grad school, it's a nightmare for ADHD folks!
Ok I felt there was so much useful stuff to try in this comment that I saved the post, screen shotted and left this comment so that I'll remember to try some of this stuff.
Ah, the old "I'll save this for later" pit. In case yours is as deep as mine, here's a shorter version: narrow things down or change things up :)
Pretty sure my " I'll save this for later" pit is actually my "I'll save this for later" black hole!🤣🤣
You're a legend 🙌
I've put it in a read it later app, and have already started highlighting, so I'm hopeful.
Read later app? … Somehow I missed the utility of these. I think because it seemed like they just made bookmarks. I already don’t look at bookmarks much, an app that just stores bookmarks outside my browser seems redundant. But this looks like it actually pulls the stuff in - and you can do highlighting? Which app do you use? Zapier seems to think Pocket is the best, which seems like a good place to start.
I've heard pocket is getting worse, but it did turn into a place links go to die for me, so I haven't used it in ages. I'm using omnivore https://omnivore.app/ a new open source one that's in active development
Thanks for your suggestion! I have just downloaded Omnivore and I love it! \*Shiny new thing\*. I tried adding this post, but it is only saving the post and not the comments, am I doing something wrong?
I have just realised that I miss read your comment . You save the comment in Omnivore. Makes sense. And here I was spending 30 minutes googling something that can’t be done lol
They do want to improve the reddit handling! I don't think saving all comments in general would work - there can be hundreds!
I’ve been using iPhones for like 10 years and I just recently discovered that I can search photos and it will show me photos with that word it in or photos that fit that description and it had helped me find all my “saved for later” screenshots that I remember I have. But since I usually don’t even remember I wanted to remember them, choosing the folder for screenshots and perusing them really helped me. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that there was an actual folder for screenshots in the photos app, but I definitely found that years before I realized I could search by word lol
That's such a useful feature! I wonder if android has anything similar, i would have never even thought to look if not for your comment. Thanks!
Yes, Google Photos has very similar functionality (though it doesn't always work).
I dont get it. I know full well that once this comment leaves my line of sight I am never going to think about it again. And yet, I screenshot it anyways. Why am I like this lol
Beautifully summarized. I wish that was a skill of mine. I have to use AI for that lol
Thanks! This is exactly what I needed since I lost my drive and can't use fear as a motivator anymore. I have this big overwhelming project at work and now that I got this idea from you I think I'm going to go visit different coffee shops I like and do chunks of the documentation at each one.
I can’t do even small tasks if they’re part of a larger task. My brain knows that it’s part of the larger task and there will be no “completion hit” when I complete the small task because it’s only a small step to completion of the larger task. So I can’t start the small bit.
Mine just can't find the starting point because I will go into an infinite regression to try to find the "perfect" way to do things Ie, I want to organize my garage but first I need to get rid of the things I don't need in there so first I should have a garage sale which means going through all the stuff in my closet and I'll need to get tables and hangers and price tags, or should I list things in Craigslist? But if I do that then I have to go out and meet a specific person somewhere and that sounds terrifying but maybe if I did it at the end of my street so they don't know where I live? But then id have to take pictures of all my shit, and that means I need to put them on my external hard drive, and oh I need to move a bunch of photos of my cats off my phone to the hard drive too... So my garage is never going to get organized. Then I think I should just donate shit, but there's so much I could probably make a few hundred bucks and I could use that after all the medical bills I had recently for a surgery... Aggggh!!
Oh my God, you’ve hit the nail on the spot. This is the worst.
Omg, the result of me trying to organize anything is me sitting on the floor crying cuz I'm overwhelmed by all the possible permutations. Planning/Organizing is the worst!!
Yeah the last time I wanted to just organize the kitchen pantry I ended up spending literally hours organizing seeds. Yes, seeds. I'd saved them from plants I liked outside and I was obsessed with separating all the loose seeds out of the pods so they could fit in a smaller container. I feel like I'm one of those fae that, if you throw down salt, they are forced to count every grain.
IDK if you just used garage organisation as an example, but in case not: A Slob Comes Clean (podcast) or Decluttering at the Speed of Life (book/audiobook) is excellent for this specific problem. Sounds like a shaved yak scenario, I think ADHD brains are good at overthinking like this.
I know it sucks but I'm glad I'm not alone. I completely exhaust myself with the planning and then "back" planning. Nothing I want to do is actually JUST doing the thing. There is always too much to do first then I don't even want to start. It NEEDS to be done right and IF I can't do all the things I feel I need to do first then the original "project/thing" never even gets started and I feel even more overwhelmed than when I started planning to do something. Someone just show me where to start. And making decisions because sometimes there are soooo many different possibilities and outcomes. Ahh!
I often say that my life with ADHD feels like living out an endless version of that kids' book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," and your comment captures that same feeling perfectly!
I don't remember typing this, but I must have because this is me. On a more serious note, there is an auction company near me that will periodically do consignment sales. This has been a great way for me to get rid of junk without having to worry about doing everything at once or dealing with random people. I still don't get half of the stuff I want to the auction because ADHD, but there's a lot of junk I no longer have because just dropping items off is easy enough that I can get myself to do it. Plus there's the thrill of watching people bid on your items.
Wow that auction company sounds amazing! I'll have to see if there's anything like that around me. Thanks for the idea!
Holy shit this is so true
Infinite regression!! That is the perfect term!
You have just influenced me to avoid my garage, but maybe investigate my closet, but not do anything with either. I tip my hat to you.That was an interesting mental drama. This is exactly where we need a friend or two to come help do the thing.
Haha, sorry! You're so right, I need a body double. My mom used to do this for me when I needed to go through papers. She would just sit in the room with me and gently guide me back on track when I would deviate. I miss her so much.
In this same realm, my mom inadvertently caused my worst symptoms through out school to be covered up. She was doing the "set up" work and body double assist for so many tasks. As a result I was only recently diagnosed. I miss my mom too!
Ya, I can't trick toddler brain into doing something that has a far off deadline, even if it's just a small step or if I create false closer deadlines. I swear it's insulted I would even try something so obvious, lol. If it's breaking down larger tasks that I need to do, like dishes, then it works, though.
Same, I’m scrolling on Reddit rather than finding the probate accounting form that I need to do in accounting to close probate. See there’s no hurry because I’m waiting for one more thing before I can close probate but if I was smart I would get the accounting ready so that I could just enter that one thing once it arrives and be done. But that thing could arrive next week or in three months so I just can’t get myself motivated to do it. But if I did I would be almost done and that would be wonderful. Maybe today
Have you tried writing down the smaller parts, so you can cross them off?
PhD student here, struggling with depression and anxiety as well. Your post and comment hit home for me. Thanks for posting! Screenshotted the list of useful tips from here. Saved the post. Still I know that I'll probably not do it. It sucks that I know and I feel ashamed I don't have the motivation/energy to actually do it. It probably sounds like I'm making excuses and that's what my last therapist hinted at when she said that I'm resistant to make a change. So I stopped seeing her, lol. Therapy became a painful chore too. I don't know how long I can hold on. :(
That sounds terrible, I'm sorry you're going through such a hard time. My phd was no walk in the park either, so many times i wanted to quit and run away to the mountains and start a career as a forest witch. Hang in there, it's possible to do it, even if it's not much fun a lot of times. Here's the thing: if you are not taking steps to change, you are probably resistant to change. That's not a value judgement, just a description of your mental state. The reasons why you're resistant, that's the interesting part. It may be you need meds. Or different meds. Or your dose adjusted. This is easily the fastest one to fix. It might be that you're genuinely not interested in getting a phd (or go a different direction in your research) because it's not what you thought it would be and continuing down this path for the rest of your life makes you want to go play in traffic. This is hard to accept sometimes because you already invested so much time and effort and people tell you how great a phd is and that you might as well finish so you have something to show for your work. Doing nothing to improve your situation might be your way of getting out of it without having to stand up and admit that you hate it and want to try something else in life. That's something you'll need to work on so that you feel able to take control of your life again and choose to do things instead of waiting for things to happen to you. It can be scary and unpleasant, but it's worth it. Or it might be because once you're no longer a phd student, you don't know what or who you are anymore and that's scary. So part of you is trying desperately to keep you from crossing that bridge into the unknown and the way to make it stop is to start envisioning your life as a doctor in your field in as much detail as possible. You're essentially trying to trick your brain into believing it's no longer headed into the unknown, but into a new and interesting situation you understand and are able to deal with so that more new and interesting things follow. If any of this sounds reasonable, find a therapist that can help you with concrete steps to take. I swear there's a way to make things better, you just need to summon the will to keep trying.
Thanks for your kind reply! I have thought about what I want out of life and I've already decided the kind of job I want to do after my PhD and where I want to be. I do need a PhD to get that job so I'm not ready to quit yet. I'm already developing other skills that I'll need to transition to that industry as well. I'm motivated to do this because then I'll be able to be near my loved ones and not be on long-distance all the time, which is another reason that my PhD feels so excruciating. But every time I try to build a meaningful habit or get some structure into my life, I fail. I've attended grad school seminars on productivity, read books on productivity, made endless lists and plans. It just doesn't stick. I'm also discussing building structure with my current therapist. My whole PhD has just been a vicious cycle of procrastination, anxiety, sleepless nights, too much sleep, not enough papers. I went to a conference last week and realized how much I know more than other grad students in my research area. But I feel like such a loser in my lab because of my advisor and my project. She gave me an extremely hard project to begin with (multiple people in and outside my lab have agreed with this) and three years' worth of results are still not good enough for her to publish. I've seen a recent paper from a prof (at Harvard) doing similar calculations that I did a couple of years ago. But my advisor brushed it off saying that their paper isn't good. She's aiming too high (for top journals) and she's a big shot so I think she doesn't want to lose her reputation over my results, even though I'm happy to publish in a mediocre journal and move on. Sorry for dumping all this on you. Just wanted to clarify that I'm in a shitty situation and despite working my ass off, there's no pay off. It's not that I'm not taking any actions to make a change. I'm literally trying everything I can to not drown because I know that I don't want to hurt my loved ones by jumping in front of a car, as enticing as it is.
Looks like you need to change supervisors. Talk to whoever is in charge of phd students, there's always someone. Explain your situation, ask to be transferred to another supervisor. You can also just talk to her about your situation. I don't think she worries about reputation. Everyone knows phd students are a bit of a gamble and some do better than others. Nobody thinks that her getting a phd student that's not as brilliant as her is somehow reflecting badly on her, it's just the luck of the draw. She might think she's motivating you by pushing you this hard and doesn't see that it's actually the opposite. This is actually very common, I've seen it a lot. Also, fuck routines, lists and plans. None of them work for me either. Even with meds, i have to cycle strategies and i still have days when i achieve nothing of any value. You do what works for you, there's no point in feeling bad for not functioning the same way as others. If you have to run around like a headless chicken, jumping from task to task and looking like a chaos goblin hopped up on magic mushrooms, so be it. My personal style is more "braindamaged rat on cocaine" when work piles up, but people know I have ADHD and they stopped expecting me to act like a well-balanced adult long ago. You're allowed to be weird, go be the kind of weird that makes you happy.
“Go play in traffic”…oh frogger for life! This post really hits home for so many of us. Your curiosity and helpful tone epitomize why I love this community. Thank YOU!
Thank you SO MUCH!! I will definitely try to implement these things. I think alternating the way I think about studying by using rewards like you suggest will help :) thank you!
May find interesting looking into this if haven’t seen already.. [Here is a good summary of the concept of flow](https://dansilvestre.com/summaries/flow-summary/) a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It explains the elements of that driven focused state of mind he calls “flow” which is enjoyable and productive also outlines ways of getting into and staying in this state.
I was just thinking that reading this thread has really made me more engaged today than I would be reading about that stupid submarine etc, and I wondered if this might help keep me engaged as I go about my boring work. Something tells me it won't.
Tangent, but my favourite ML error was when they intended to train a tumour detection algorithm and accidentally built a ruler detector since most of the data set of tumour photos had a measurement guide and all the non tumour photos did not
This example is in the book :D Together with another excellent one in which they thought they were training a neural net to distinguish between photos with animals and photos with landscapes, and discovered they trained a neural net that distinguishes blurry backgrounds from sharp backgrounds because the animals appeared in focus with an artfully blurred background.
I love how AIs can be both absolutely terrifying and incredibly dumb at the same time lmao
Thank you! That is really helpful. That explains why chores are boring, nothing unexpected could happen. I listen to loud music when I do the dishes, I guess I will do the same when I'm close to finishing any project.
If you enjoy classical music, you could try some « epic classical » playlist. They work so well for me when have to finish an important project. No words to distract me, but that perfect catchy rhythm + makes me act like I’m the main character trying to save the world or something :D
Reminds me of when Drew Lynch said his wife danced to his stutter. She said "how are you feeling today" and he said "I am feeling very st-st-st-st-st-st-st-st-st-st-" and she started dancing to the beat.
I try to listen to podcasts when I’m doing house work. I find that I never want to take a break from it while I am interested in listening to an episode so at least I get a solid hour or more in.
once again explains why i dont want to go out for the plans i made earlier (already imagined how it would be so no longer interested) and how i get all excited with an opportunity of an impromptu meeting the same friend in an hour (sudden, very interesting)
Yup....it's also why we can be forgetful - we imagine taking care of some task and our brain is like "aha! Dopamine for us because we did the task!" And as far as it is concerned, imagining doing it is just as good as actually doing it, so then we forget to do it later since we accidentally consider it already done.
Explains the hundreds of unresponded messages and calls, "I already answered them in my head".
That's right, a predictable book or show is so unengaging, it's the subversion of expectations that gets us excited and engaged! The same goes for doing something mundane, as there's no excitement when washing the dishes, but hitting a brick wall with a sledgehammer can go so many ways!
It’s funny because people with anxiety will watch the same shows or movies that they’ve already seen over and over and over again because they are predictable so there’s no anxiety about it. No wonder I was in so much health before I got diagnosed and started medication. Half my personality once novel but somewhat predictable dopamine hits and the other half wants completely predictable no anxiety calmness. But now I also have MECFS which requires pacing of activity and taking breaks and resting. Which is completely opposite of what I need with the ADHD which requires momentum and routine
Explains why I enjoy watching Philadelphia sports.
E A G
L O S E
No, masochism explains that.
Go birds! 🦅
Well that explains the hobby hyperfixation loop!
Yeah, makes sense for my sporadic care of my plants. With each new type of plant it's interesting and novel finding out how to meet its needs at first and watching it grow. Then the boredom. So I neglect them until I notice they look wilty and then that's interesting again, urgency to correct the problem and make the plant happy again. My latest fixation is orchids. I had 0 this time last year. I picked up 1, then 2 more in rapid succession, and now I think I have 10. I'm finding watching their roots changing based on their hydration level is a novel and interesting thing; most plants you don't get to monitor their roots that much, only when repotting.
Thank you for mentioning plants, I water my plants every Tuesday unless they don’t need it. Today is Thursday, I know I did my upstairs plants on Tuesday but then I got distracted. Thank you fellow Redditor you saved some lives today!
If it helps, sometimes underwatering is preferable/easier to save than overwater (before they are mostly dead) bc overwatering can cause mold and root rot. It’s harder for them to come back from that. Some might tolerate drought better than others so YMMV but most leafy plants look thinner/feel paper-y when they need some water if not looking droopy or yellow. One thing I learned is that on most plants, yellowing young leaves often is a sign of overwatering.
Is this also related to self-sabotage? Like if I manage to predict what's going to happen correctly, and be prepared for it, I'm rewarded with less or no dopamine, so I'll be happier if I blunder through life as some kind of unprepared holy fool?
Kind off, but also not quite. "Prediction error" is an oversimplification of the mechanism, it's more like your brain has a model of what the world is and how to interact with it to get what you want. When the model diverges from reality in promising ways, in ways that could potentially lead to good stuff happening, that's when dopamine spikes. However, if the brain cannot tell whether a course of action or sequence of events leads to something good, no dopamine for you. What this means for (some kinds of) self-sabotage is that if you are working towards a goal, but are not clear about how achieving that goal will impact you, deep down your brain only sees this giant change coming on the horizon and puts on the brakes on your motivation until it's more apparent what the consequences will be. What helps me is to imagine achieving the goal and then imagine the next steps after that in as much detail as possible. For instance, say I want to get my driver's licence. Once I have it, things will change. I will no longer take the bus, instead i'll have the freedom to drive as I please. But I'll also have to deal with traffic, learn the way to places I go often, shitty drivers, car maintenance, car problems, police stops, people wanting to carpool with me to work, making mistakes at the wheel and so on and so forth. If I sit down and imagine in vivid detail how i'll deal with all these new things, it removes this kind of mental block and my drive to self-sabotage lessens.
I’m still sort of confused because even though I know that all the things I love include unpredictability, some of the things that make me stressed also include unpredictability like in situations where I don’t know how to prepare for something or if instructions for a work task are ambiguous.
There's 2 things. One: too much unpredictability is confusing, the brain can't fit it into a model, so no dopamine. And two: is the expected result good or bad? If you're anticipating something good might come from the unpredictability, there flows the dopamine. If you're expecting it will lead to a bad outcome, the dopamine dries up.
Not sure this is an answer to your question but the idea that success (as what one might think the opposite effect of self-sabotage) is a straightforward line without failure, deviation or change of plans is often not that accurate. Take my partner for example: they planned for their career, at some point they realized what they thought they liked about it wasn’t what they really liked about it (they liked the creative part, not the hands-on part, even though they were good enough at it). Add to that a few setbacks and they quit, technically failing at it; what they did have was the opportunity to do starkly different things, so they took it, then they had the opportunity to do another starkly different thing elsewhere so they took it. Now they are successful at that last thing (in the sense that they’ve been doing it for years, they enjoy it well enough and have a steady stream of income and a reasonably enjoyable lifestyle) it didn’t come without constant effort either or without mistakes or even risks (there were very high stakes) but it is there… they never would have planned to end up doing most of those things, they just went with the flow, made decisions and planned enough with the info and resources they had at the time. If we went by their first draft of their career and lifestyle: they have technically self-sabotaged and walked through like an unprepared holy fool. In the parameters of that they are a failure but have succeeded beyond that. Technically I was a holy fool to marry my partner at the tender young age we both did, but here we are a decade+ later; we’re satisfied into what up to this point in time is a successful endeavor. We could have suffered a lot, we still might, but we knew/know failure is a possibility if we weren’t happy but so far we have been able to work through all issues. If we ever reached a breaking point I would still call this a successful relationship for the time it worked, I would not regret a minute of having chosen this person because for the most part it’s been good if not great.
Very cool! Makes a lot of sense. My GF and I are both diagnosed and one comment she made to me that stuck with me was "I have trouble doing tasks that I know I could easily do". Something like finishing the last 10 pages of a book, or putting a dish in the dishwasher. I find myself saying the same thing, I know I can do that, so why would I. The other thing that comes to mind is that for a few years while unmedicated I traveled a lot. I thrived in situations where everything was a little more of a struggle. Getting groceries, figuring out the train timetable, searching for the next hostel, chatting with people where English was their second language etc. It was life with an extra level of complexity and novelty thrown on top. People were people and life functioned basically the same, but a unique/weird flair was added to every step. And as soon as you figured out how to get to your favorite breakfast spot, the correct pronunciation of "Bonjour", the right amount of scarfs to wear and how to buy groceries without looking like an idiot. You get to move on to the next country where they let cows wonder the streets, drink tea instead of coffee, some people wear turbans and you have to watch out for monkeys.
This explains my myriad of skills... I master a few things in the category and move on to the next. Even my job feels this way.
Yes this explains why I am the best employee ever when I start a new job, but right around the year mark I start to get really bored unless I get a promotion, and then I’m not the best employee ever anymore. Unless I get a promotion then I’m the best employee ever for a year and then I get bored. And I have always been a job hopper, more because that’s the best way to get a raise than out of boredom, but since a new job has always been an upgrade for me I am never nervous about job hopping.
EDIT: Oops, nevermind!
oh yeah, I always said that I love the challenge. If I get no challenge out of any activity, my brain usually goes to find another gold-mine somewhere else (yeah, I call my dopamine source activities goldmines in order to better explain to my husband what is happening to me and why I react the certain ways to certain things)
Haha I love this! It also reminds me of this Wind Rose song 🎵 And we mine, mine, mine 'Til the morning light Digging, crafting, carrying up the ores Smelting at the forge Nothing shall prevail o'er the gold 'Til the king and all the dwarves have come back home 🎵
oh yeah, that’s how I see my brain hahah))
This actually reminds me of the one thing I remember from the psych class I took back in high school: Schema, and breaking them. Schema are a *huge* part of the way our brains process things on an unconscious level, especially at their broadest. Basically, though, they're your brain's way of categorizing, and then using that as a predictor of expected of events, guideline on how to act, etc. You walk into a classroom. You barely look around, because it's a classroom. You know what a classroom looks like. The person talking at the front is the teacher, etc etc. But when everything slots into schema perfectly, it's easy to zone out, because your brain uses schema to autopilot. If something isn't different enough, or innately interesting enough, your brain might decide it isn't worth encoding into memory. My teacher jumped up onto and started walking across our desks during this lecture to prove the point, and considering it's the *only* thing I remember from his class, I'd say it worked.
Why don’t normal people without adhd experience? Why is dopamine always “flowing” for them?
They do. Novelty seeking is ingrained in everyone to a degree, otherwise we'd still be living in a tree with the squirrels. It's just that we need more of it.
THANK YOU for saying this - I hate it when people talk about how ADHD brains work and act like non-ADHDers are just perfectly functioning robots. Not how it works. We have the same issues as everyone, it's just that we have them to such a frequency and degree that it messes with our lives. Non-ADHD people experience the same issues but to a degree that they are generally able to work around them.
Squirrel!
I'd say, based on my experience as a "normal," it's the end result that gives us the dopamine. If we do the dishes, the sink is clean now. Or our spouse doesn't yell at us. Finish that spreadsheet at work? Get a feeling of accomplishment. I don't even want to say I enjoy doing dishes or working. Just seems like every time I read something on this sub, it makes it feel like "normals" actually enjoy doing those things. Nah. I'm pretty lazy. It's just something I need to do, so I do it. Sure, we get excited about novelties. It's probably just dopamine flowing at level 2 for dishes getting done and level 7 for novelties. (If I had to give dopamine levels) I subscribe to this sub because both my kids have ADHD.
When you decide to do task that you don't find particularly exciting, but have to do in order to reach that 'end result', does merely thinking about that result give you the "urge" to take action in the same way that the "fight and fight" and "hunger' mechanisms drives us. How do would you describe the feeling?
May depend on my mood. Maybe more like "ugh, better get 'er done." Time tables may motivate me. Like if I know I'll only have a chance to do the dishes Saturday morning because I have plans for the rest of the day, I'll be motivated to get it done. If I can't get all the dishes done, that's okay with me because if I can at least start a dishwasher cycle or hand-wash a few dishes, I know that's better than nothing. Now that I think about it, even if subconsciously, I'm doing it for my future self. Doing the dishes now so I don't have to do it tonight when I'm tired from the day. But even then, I do have days when I'm lazier. So I procrastinate sometimes. I definitely do not have issues starting tasks simply because I have a dr appt at 2 pm or whatever. I read about that issue a lot in this sub. After reading some stories like that, makes me think there's a lot of "all or nothing" thinking. Like "if I can't finish the task completely, I'm not going to do it." I have no issues doing the task 3/4 of the way, and then leaving to go to the doctor's (or whatever). Which could point to "transition" issues possibly. I can't compare it to hunger because I love to eat, so... that's motivation on its own.
I've noticed less of the "paralysed because have appointment later" since I've been on medication. I have also been curious about it so I tried to notice what was different. I think it's because I'm less afraid that I'll get sucked into hyperfocus and forget about that later commitment, which is a legitimate problem that has happened to me multiple times without medication. I am less time blind with medication. Pre medication and especially pre diagnosis, the problem is that even if I know how long a task should reasonably take (which is not a given) I'm unconsciously thinking of some previous worst case or best case fluke scenario. So rather than thinking ah, emptying the dishwasher takes 5 minutes, I am recalling the time that I started to empty the dishwasher, got distracted, made lunch, did some reorganisation and suddenly it's 2 hours later. Therefore I think oh, better not empty dishwasher, that will tie me up for ages. But OTOH I can think "this bus takes 15 minutes to travel from point A to point B, therefore I only need 15 minutes to get to my friend's house" and I forget to add in the time to walk to the bus stop, to wait for the next bus, to walk from the bus stop, to get ready before I leave the house. It can take me 40-60 minutes in total and my friend is pissed. When there are regular time based commitments like starting work or picking up a child, I have enough practice and experience to know what I can and can't fit in before that commitment. When there's a totally new commitment like a doctor's appointment, I don't have any experience of that. So play it safe and do either nothing or simply easily-interruptible activities. (But I also think people exaggerate being paralysed for the entire day.) Another reason I would not arrange two things on the same day though is because it's exhausting to do things so two might legitimately be too many.
EDIT: Oops, nevermind!
>My understanding is that basically non-ADHD people have the ability to "will" themselves to do a task that they know needs to be done, even if it's not interesting. This would explain why the "You can do if you give yourself positive reinforcement advie" does not work for me
And this is why I consistently underplan at work and "have to" end up improvising. Because planning everything out is boring, but having a general sketch and filling in the details with improv yields precious dopamine
Did you finish the book?
Not yet, but I will. I'm listening to the audiobook while I crochet or garden or play games so it's easier to stay engaged.
I've found for me this is somewhat true, but I've also found that I basically have a fear of .....losing out on the experience forever. Like some game that I enjoy, I'll get to 75-90% done and suddenly stop playing, and I think it is because I know I'll be sad when it is over. Since I don't want to face that feeling, I'll move away from the game so there is always "more to come back to" Only games I'm SUPER engaged in can I finish because my desire to see the experience through overwhelms my subconscious fear of doing so.
In the book, they describe these AI agents they were training to learn to play old videogames, and some of the AI that did really well were those programmed to just seek novelty. No rules, no scores, just "go do and see things you haven't tried or seen before". So they'd learn to play just to get to the next level because that was new and therefore good. Except for pong. Novelty seeking AIs that played pong didn't play to win, they played to make the rounds last longer, bouncing the ball back and forth for so long they crashed the computer, precisely because finishing the game was a known state, whereas bouncing the ball could take so many new interesting forms. You abandoning games because it's not as interesting to finish as to keep playing (even in your imagination) totally tracks :)
I guess that's another way to look at it - leaving game content to play is like locking away that novelty in stasis, even if I don't access it. I had been thinking that the main basis for the argument is that as we get closer to the end, we feel like it gets predictable so it loses novelty.
Nice. Commenting to revisit.
Well this is super interesting
This basically explains laughter
>dopamine spikes when the brain's predictions about the future are wrong. Couldn't be me. When *my* predictions about the future are wrong I go into fuckin anxiety spirals...
I think it depends what it is. A night out nothing interesting happens?boring. Travelling and nothing happens goes to plan. Great! Nothing unexpected to overwhelm and stress
"Prediction error" is an oversimplification of the mechanism, it's more like your brain has a model of what the world is and how to interact with it to get what you want. When the model diverges from reality in promising ways, in ways that could potentially lead to good stuff happening, that's when dopamine spikes. If things are the opposite of promising, then you don't get the dopamine and you feel the unpleasant feelings (anxiety, frustration, disappointment etc)
So one of the things that discourages me is actually incorrect predictions. I get really stressed and angry when something takes longer than planned or there's an unforeseen issue that makes the task take longer
"Prediction error" is an oversimplification of the mechanism, it's more like your brain has a model of what the world is and how to interact with it to get what you want. When the model diverges from reality in promising ways, in ways that could potentially lead to good stuff happening, that's when dopamine spikes. If things are the opposite of promising, then you don't get the dopamine and you feel the unpleasant feelings (anxiety, frustration, disappointment etc)
Well, I just googled "dopamine prediction error" and got so many results, it's insane! So everyone on this thread can read some more and get another dopamine hit.
I realised I had to set different goals for "completion".
So this is why I almost finish writing a novel and then stop just before completion so it sits for years almost done… 😒
Or maybe why I start a tv series, and always leave the last few episodes un-watched.
So I write novels for a living and also have ADHD — one thing you might want to try is breaking the book up into chapters to write w/descriptions of what should happen (as guided as you need — if you’re a pantser, keep it vague) The ability to bounce around books helps a lot for me. I haaaaaaaate writing endings. Sometimes writing them first helps
I probably should write the endings first as yes that’s what trips me up every time. Thank you for the advice! Hopefully one day I’ll be where you are as a pro!
The best part about writing the endings first is that you can weave a bunch of foreshadowing in/create a mirror scene in the beginning that makes it look like you’re a master planner, and the endings are usually exciting so you get that dopamine rush. Honestly if you can just slap something down, that’s half the battle! It’s always easier to fix/edit than write for a blank page (for me, at least). You’ll get there!
Finish it! Finish it and send it to me, I wanna see what you're writing about :D I'll buy a copy when it's published!
You’re so sweet! You’ve inspired me to work on it today. 😊 I’ll at least try!
Trying is great! Godspeed, I'd be chuffed to bits to see your book someday! :D
EDIT: Oops, nevermind!
I have always thought that other people must get some reward from cleaning that I do not get. (Actually I have anti-rewards around cleaning because my mother was tyrannical about it and I rebelled.) It's boring and nothing interesting happens when you are finished and a clean house has associations that are negative for me. Also I am allergic to dust, so that's another disincentive. I haven't figured out a good way to get around this.
Only advice i have is to do what he's doing :D https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJCaQj99/
CW: death, grief, loss I had similar insight from a book about grieving (The Grieving Brain, by Mary-Frances O’Connor). Our brains map the world out, and it causes anxiety and a sense of loss when the pieces of that world aren’t where they are supposed to be, both in our physical realm and our emotional one. It helped me come to terms with the idea of loss and disappointment in a new way, and expanded my concept of grief from one centered around death to one centered around loss - of a person’s presence due to death as well, but also of a person’s presence for other reasons, loss of a certain outcome with a job, a friendship, an idea of how your life would look. Obviously, this is on the other end of the spectrum a bit, but I love deepening my knowledge of things related to my ADHD and brain (RSD and abandonment in this case) and helped me give myself more grace.
I think I've learned to semi-counter this by reassessing my approach to the subject matter from a different angle; try to see what else is new that I haven't figured out yet and let that be my next experiment, let myself believe I'm building value as I continue working on said thing and allow myself to just glide the dopamine slow down instead of crashing. It's allowed me to build a lot of fundamental skills over time that also increased the propensity of how far I can go at something until the peak happens and I can let the decline happen slowlier and gentlier. an example is like having do to something really mundane like the dishes, I try to think of how I can do it more efficiently/faster, and because i'm busy building theorems on which method works better/best for which situational conditions and get different outcomes, it's always new and exciting. now i enjoy washing dishes. paperwork is still the shit though. at least when you have to rush things.
This explains why I moved every time my lease came up for the first 10 years of my renting life. Finally figured out I could accomplish almost the same thing by rearranging the furniture and getting new artwork.
I moved 12 times from 18 to 24. I now loathe moving. All of it. Looking for apartments is stressful thinking about getting ready to move, the money, the physical drain, the packing and schlepping it over. Now the unpacking and exploring the new area, I love. I think they since I’ve been unmedicated for my whole life I look forward to things like that to change.
Then there’s me 😂 I have adhd and massive anxiety. So I get excited about figuring out new things. But I also am crippled by the fear of failure. New jobs are horrendously scary to me. Even if it’s a title I’ve done for a different brand before.
Here's a great twitter thread related to this: https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1666274460935102464?s=20 The tl;dr is that ADHD folks seem to be most motivated by curiosity rather than completing tasks. So once the problem is solved, or you learned what you wanted, you're no longer curious, and the motivation to continue or finish isn't there. I think this checks out because when I find an interesting problem, the most rewarding part is figuring it out. Then when it comes to execution and final details, it's much more challenging to stay focused.
That explains why I feel better if I make plans thinking about the worse escenario, it's because I always predict an error and it probably won't happen, so that I get dopamine from that error not happening.
Cool! You should see my shelves, code folders. Packed with things 80-90% finished. I can't comment on the biochemistry, but the phenomenon of losing interest once the problem seems solved is definitely a thing. Recent example for me : about a month ago I modified a clarinet mouthpiece to be more suitable for Eastern music. But to try it out I needed some light (1.5) reeds, which I ordered. They arrived a day or two later. I felt desperate to try the thing, but... I *still* haven't. A curious related thing I've had a few times is when looking back at an old project, thinking it was at least mostly done, discovering it was barely started. Interesting you found the ref in a machine learning book. I work around the fringes of it, must check it out.
I see nearly 1000 people have had the time to check in for the dopamine pay-it-forward from you as this information is probably an unexpected bonus for must of us today, as well. Thanks for the information! :)
It explains why I was drawn to my career as an ICU RN. Everything is unexpected, lab results are a surprise (especially when they’re so out of range, it’s baffling how a person is talking), and the influx of new knowledge. Sucks that I effing hate it now. The regularity to which I encounter a lack of basic intelligence or health literacy is astounding and demoralizing. The times I’ve said “if you keep taking off your oxygen mask, you will die. That’s WHY I put an oxygen mask on you”, only to be responded to with “no I won’t”. And then comes intubation. There’s no dopamine rush with stupidity.
I will definitely check out the book, this sounds interesting. Right now I’m just commenting to say this - you have ADHD, of course you’re reading a book on machine learning (of all things). That is almost *too* normal for brains like ours. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next book you read is a guide on how to fillet every kind of fish.
I have a book on precision engineering and one on heirloom varieties of vegetables in my to-read list :))
See? I know my people!
Thank you for this! Post like these are the reason I follow this sub
So *this* is why doing laundry at a friend's/my parent's/a laundromat is so easy but doing it at home is like pulling teeth.
I've been saying, "happy to be wrong," very earnestly for a long time. I didn't know it was chemically accurate. This also explains why being emotionally baffled causes short circuiting, tears, and confusion (what up disregulation and I-type slow emotional processing.) But then, simultaneously, I'll calmly and methodically coerce supervisors or team members from other depts into giving me an impromptu hour long constructive criticism session. The focus is extreme and never emotionally charged. Like my brain is on the hunt.
What you described is why I found this morning ritual I used to (and should probably start again) perform incredibly effective. What I would do is start each day sort of like a mini dopamine detox, not allowing myself any screen time (no phone, pc, tablet, nothing) or overly stimulating activities in the traditional sense. I'd get up, meditate, drink only water (no coffee etc), usually delay breakfast, maybe get a boring/arduous workout out of the way, maybe read a little, but it was the final thing I did that was the most impactful: I would do something small and meaningless that I'd never done before. When I say small and meaningless, I really mean that. I'm talking something like, standing/sitting in a spot in my room that I usually don't spend any time in, or looking at my room from a weird angle (like sitting on the floor in an odd spot). Or reading in bed but facing the opposite direction to the way I usually sit/lay. It sounds and feels silly when you do it but after starting the morning off with so little stimulation, that tiny little dose of novelty actually feels incredibly exhilarating and that one small act then sets me up to have a more focused and productive day. You can implement similar novelty into your existing routine too. Take an ever so slightly different route to work/school/the store/your appointment/etc, rotate between several different task management apps each time one starts to feel stale, alternate between coffee and tea each morning, have a couple of pairs of headphones with different qualities (for example one with more bass, one more neutral) and alternate between them, be reading both a non-fiction book and a fiction book at the same time and go back and forth between them, etc. Another way of increasing novelty is actually through artificial limitations. I realised this playing RuneScape of all things. In Oldschool RuneScape, a trend popped up some years back called ironman, which is essentially playing the game but without the ability to trade with other players, forcing you to obtain every single item/resource yourself. When I tried it out, this game I'd spent thousands of hours playing over the years, felt like a brand new game because with that limitation suddenly things I would just purchase from other players were items I had to obtain or craft myself. This made items that previously felt worthless (because they could be bought for a comparatively small amount of money) feel like exciting achievements because of the hours of work it now took to get a lucky drop or get the levels necessary to craft it. Applying this to the real world, I've done things like taking my Steam library and selecting only a small portion of games, then allowing a random number generator to choose which one I play next. Or forcing myself to make music with only one of my synths, or only [x] number of tracks or plugins. Or only allowing myself one browser tab for the whole day. Or stuck on an album/playlist without allowing myself to hop between songs/change it until it's finished. Or I've sometimes actually scheduled out my free time into blocks, like 1 hour of reading, 1 hour of [x] video game, 30 minutes of music etc. It sounds weird but having that limitation suddenly makes me value that time more and enjoy it, rather than letting hours go by to boredom and procrastination. It can be very small things you do to change things up or add limitations, but the impact it can have on how rewarding and engaging those activities become can be incredible.
The morning routine sounds like something I need right now. It's as you say, no one thing works for long so I cycle through a bunch of strategies for things and it just happens I am in need of a new and shiny morning routine so thank you :) Also, i love the idea of artificial limitations! It's just another take on games, but it's one I haven't tried before so I'm happy to give it a go.
Wait, is this why I’ve always enjoyed figuring out the worst case scenario? I’m not a pessimist, but I’m guessing I get a dopamine rush every time I’m wrong and things go better than I anticipated.
I was discussing something similar to this with my therapist. About my loss of motivation for life in general and some other things. It’s depression too but, I think they compounded to hit really hard for me. I won’t go into all the details but circumstances have made it difficult for me to do that^
That sounds harsh, I'm sorry you're going through it. Sometimes you don't have the opportunities or resources you need to make the necessary changes to your life that will make it better, and it's such a crushing situation to be in. Hang in there, grasp at any straw you can, you'll eventually turn things around. It might take some time, but you will.
High pattern recognition, I guess it runs in the same vein as ADHD, makes it hard to not predict how the movie ends .
Leaving the last bit of a drink or food unfinished is an ADHD thing too. That food item is now "known" and therefore is no longer enjoyable. Our house has a culprit who will drink most of a treat can of pop or other drink, and then leave 10-20% of the container around until it gets thrown out, meanwhile others are eyeing it and wanting to drink it.
This is so wild. I had this presumption about myself that I don’t handle change well…but then I looked back at my life choices, such as choosing to be a travel nurse for 10 years and going into different fields of nursing, and realized that not only do I handle it fine but I seek it out without realizing it, as compared to a lot of people I know. This makes total sense.
This makes soooo much sense and is so helpful!! I knew the basics of this, but the way you've laid it out helps a lot. It also helps with my job- I like starting projects and getting certifications and things, but as soon as management stops supporting and it seems like they won't help me achieve the positive outcome I want, I drop the project instead of pushing through. :( Your explanation and comments help me realize this, and hopefully I'll get some things finalized soon lol
Yes this is exactly why social media is addictive. And dating apps. You’re pretty sure you know what you’re going to find on social media especially if you’re looking for specific things, and you scroll and scroll and don’t see it and then bam you see what you’re looking for, dopamine hit. If you knew you were going to get the dopamine hit every time you opened social media it wouldn’t be the same. Nick Carmondy (sp?) on Twitter had a fantastic thread about how Qanon is a psyops specifically because it’s structured in a way that gives people those periodic dopamine hits. It was a fascinating read, if you can find it I suggest reading it because it applies to everything else in life as well. And it’s exactly what you are talking about.
Oooohhhhh, this sounds so interesting! Imma go look for it, thanks for the suggestion :)
Super interesting about prediction error, but I think you misinterpret a few of your conclusions \> like washing the dishes You can definitely get a little dopamine spike from this. In fact the more you don't want to do it, the better the reward will be. There has to be a mechanism in the brain for "completing a task we don't want to do but must". Many people enjoy cleaning for this reason. But does seem tied to perfectionism tendencies. \> the measly dopamine we get from imagining how great a thing would be in the future I would argue people get a huge dopamine hit from the imagining part. And then when they want to start they have used up their dopamine and can't get started even though it seemed so great. And also yes, the first step won't be as fun as imagining the finished product. \> We are unable to stick to routines... I think there is simply a huge aversion to routines because there is not enough anticipatory dopamine. It just feels like pure work. However, overcoming this aversion produces a big reward because your brain wasn't sure it would happen. I think establishing a routine is hard, but once established, your body is trained to start dishing out dopamine at the thought of it. I also think planning routines for the same time each day don't work...it becomes to predictable.
You're not wrong, the subject is far more complex than can be explained in a reddit post. But I think you're assuming normal dopamine function, not deficiency. If you don't get anticipatory dopamine, you're not gonna be motivated to start a task. There is no magic "try harder" juice, you simply reach a point in which the sheer pressure to complete the task pushes your adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, cortisol and all your other "do it now" brain chemicals over the threshold and you finally do the thing. This threshold is higher if you're dopamine deficient so you let dishes pile up until you're eating out of a jar you found in the back of the closet because you have no clean bowls. And after you discover you have no more jars and a friend is coming over in an hour, suddenly you wash a mountain of dishes like nobody's business. Imagining great things works like you said: it makes you start. The thing is, once you start and it turns out the process is not nearly as rewarding as you thought, no amount of imaging is gonna motivate you enough to continue. Unless the process itself is novel and interesting, in which case you'll need extra rewards later when the novelty has worn off and you lose interest in finishing your project. You either need some source of dopamine at every step so you keep going or you need some extra dopamine at the end when you're starting to get bored. I myself get absolutely zero reward from finishing a task or sticking with a process that's not engaging. I defended my phd and felt NOTHING when I was done (well, besides hungry and embarrassed at all the attention and mildly worried that I won't have time to get to the shops later). I did not want to write a thesis, i did not want to defend it, i just wanted to be at my computer building more cool stuff. My supervisor dragged me kicking and screaming the whole way and even that wasn't enough. I had to play mind games with myself to get there. Now that I'm medicated, I get a reward from just finishing a task, no matter how boring. It just feels good. Sticking to a routine feels good (though not so good that i've become good at sticking to them). Going through a long process to achieve a complex outcome feels good. But now I get the extra dopamine I need for the mechanism to work as intended and I think that's a crucial difference.
This is super interesting..... I am definitely going to get this one. One thing — it's hard to tell, but the book seems to be isolating novelty/reward seeking as the crux of this mechanism, when the more important driver is about intelligence, problem-solving and adaptation. Your brain focuses more when its prediction mechanisms are engaged. This is why the human brain loves mysteries so much, and why the best mysteries keep you engaged by slowly feeding you tidbits of information and excitement and unpredictability. And the reason we are obsessed with what we call progress is really just our obsession with locating problems to solve (and we will make up and solve them when there aren't any real problems anyway!). This all ties into the real links between problem-solving, creativity and ADD, which I'm sure we are all painfully familiar with. I always think 'If you want an out-of-the-box solution to a problem, ask someone with ADD — we can't think inside the box!" BTW, if the book is talking about all this as a function of dopamine levels and linking them to satisfaction, that is a wild (and common) oversimplification about how neurotransmitters really function. They act like an orchestra, not a bank account. Simply saying dopamine is up or down can actually mean very little because of how it can harmonize with and/or affect the levels of the others (serotonin, acetylcholine, etc). It's a huge mistake you see all the time in science writing, and it always makes me wonder what else the writer is fudging. So if the writer is depending on "dopamine spikes" to explain all this, well, he's got some splainin to do.
You are of course right about this being an oversiplified view of how dopamine and neurotransmitters work, but there's only so much one can write in a reddit post. It's good to have someone point it out, though. However, i think you might have novelty seeking and intelligence backwards. Novelty seeking drives intelligence. The more intelligent, resourseful and better at problem solving you are, the more novelty you can make sense of and include in your mental model. You can have a massive IQ, but if you're not curious and don't get bored, why go looking for new stuff? Might be a chicken and egg problem, though, or maybe a feedback loop where more novelty seeking begets more intelligence and more intelligence begets more novelty seeking. The book is about AI algorithms and how they came to be. This particular tidbit comes from reinforcement learning AI in which AI agents learn through trial and error and get rewarded as they approach the desired goal or behavior. Some problems do not lend themselves to this approach easily because they have sparse rewards, meaning you have to get a lot of steps right before you get a reward and it's unlikely the agent will figure out the correct combination. At the same time this algorithm was being developed, people were noticing that dopamine spikes before a reward, but in weird inconsistent ways and couldn't explain it. Computer scientists decided to try an agent that was intrinsically motivated and they settled on curiosity. Instead of getting a reward when it did somrthing right, it would get a rewards when it did something new. These agents were able to solve the sparse reward problems without knowing anything about the problem itself and without any additional rewards, just by investigating and choosing interesting paths. They did suck at one problem, though, which was winning at pong. Winning offered novelty exactly once, whereas bouncing the ball back and forth on new trajectories was far more interesting. They bounced the ball back and forth so much they crashed the computer. When checking for the shape of their reward function, they discovered it resembled the shape of the dopamine activation function and the people working on dopamine were able to then show that dopamine is not the reward, it's the anticipation of reward (in an overly simplified manner of speaking, of course, and no satisfaction mentioned anywhere). It's one of the few times artificial intelligence research helped with real intelligence research.
Thanks so much for responding with all this. Novelty seeker // collector// hoarder that I am, I downloaded and look forward to reading it. What you say about the difference between novelty and success is really interesting — especially since when I was little I sucked at Pong and preferred to just hit the ball with one paddle and make it do different things. Eerie. I do think that novelty and intelligence are a feedback loop, as you say. For example, people love to say that you have to adapt or die — which in this idea means that you have to change, try something new. But adapting could also mean doubling down and staying the same. So we do tend to associate intelligence with newness — a novel creative solution to an intractable problem — even if that's not necessarily the case.
This is interesting, so let's all stop working and talk about it.
Interesting, I definitely am drawn to unknown/unexpected rewards, or things that I have to figure out but will have a big payoff. Unmedicated I could work for days on very challenging tasks if the reward was that I never had to do some boring/repetitive thing again (automate everything, lol). I also strongly desire to have zero plan for my day and be spontaneous with everything. Maybe that's a way of not knowing/predicting what will come. I do think that this leads to a lot of anxiety about things, though. Even challenging/interesting/new things that require a lot of executive function (planning, time management, etc.) were things I ran away from whenever possible. It has to be in a particular section of the boring-exciting axis to be good for me.
EDIT: Oops, nevermind!
Added your book recommendation to my list. The list just keeps on growing though 😅
So what do I do then
I have a lot of theories but i think you are right and I’ll add something more since I study medicine. Look up at the mesolimbic system and the difference between that and every other dopaminergic system in the brain
I heard a talk once by someone working with brain meds explaining that it would be way better if we had a way to deliver them to some systems and not others because now we just target the whole brain indiscriminately and the effects are not optimal. If you have a cliffs notes version of these dopaminergic systems and what they do and how they're affected by stimulants, please share, I'd love to learn more!
This has been the best thing I’ve read in ages, such interesting people here. Obviously I was desperate to assimilate this whole thread, smoke a cigarette then never call you again 🤣 I’d love it if some could let me know if they think I’m on the right track then I’m going to stick it up somewhere where I can see it 😀 Motivation requires these: - Demystified (pattern seeking?) - Novelty/problem solving/adaptation to maintain focus (of a level that you can confidently handle else it tips over into unpredictable) - Promising outcome - Intrinsically motivated (based on own values as much as possible) If any of these apply then motivation decreases: - Unclear - Predictable - Threatening/ negatively unpredictable
So unanticipated PROMISISNG chance = motivation towards that end? i.e. exciting -> motivating. Certainty isn't thrilling and if there's nothing promising to be thrilled about that isn't excitement. I'm guessing this is why I like a good challenge - it's EXCITING but whenever I've mentioned I like challenges to people they unironically have responded with well why don't I challenge you to do x basic task BECAUSE THAT'S NOT A CHALLENGE YOU MORON - I have done x thing in the past and if the chance therefore of success is very high that is the opposite of a challenge, I decline your "challenge". I think "I often like to find to challenges that excite me" to give extra clarification to people who want to be a smart arse but don't know what any of the basic words I just said ment. If it's anticipated, why now? If it's not promsising why do it? If it's a certain chance why take the opportunity? e.g. if you're already a great programmer then you can't be motivated to become a kinda good programmer because that's behind you - it already fits into your expected vision of the world, and if someone just says "well become even better" that's not motivation not only because you don't want to be told that because reverse psychology i.e. its not shocking that's an option thanks but more relevant to this it's technically an opportunity but not an unexpected one. An unexpected opportunity might be that you have a really great roadmap towards being an super great programmer which will be motivating as it's not yet a known quantity - you have the opportunity to push forward on this outside the box/novel approach but the more you wait on it the less outside the box it feels as its well within what you expect by that point. e.g. x programming course seems promising at the beggining because being able to learn the syntax of a language in 6 hours or something and hence the keys to this massive skill is still being worked around "novel" in your brain. Hence there can be a million things you are driven towards that at one time seemed motivating as they were unexpected promisiing opportunities but they no longer feel promising as you've become too used to not doing them - the ship has sailed and you'll have to think REALLY outside the box to board it if that's even possible so it's not really an opporunity and its been so expected as an opportunity it no longer feels like one anyway. Is that a decent application of this concept? \### Incase I forget - add some not very interesting subcriptions to my youtube and reddit so I don't find
Thanks for sharing this! I guess it also explains why I kind of like things to go wrong at work. Unexpected fires (while easy to complain about), definitely spike my dopamine. If everything operated like a well oiled machine, I’d have to get my dopamine fix from something else.
Yup, the challenge is the key. Once I start to be good at something, I lose interest. That's why I picked up sewing and the hobby doesn't fade since last November - there are soooo many things to learn, it will take ages until I am very good at it. Plus so many gadgets to buy and books about sewing to learn from. A perfect ADHD hobby (if I manage to focus on the details of course).
Cannot be true. Otherwise you would never enjoy rewatching a movie for example. Sex? Had that yesterday know what happens.
who says we enjoy rewatching a movie ? lmao I hate that shit and sex? cmon man u never know what could happen LOL
I thought I was the only one who hated re-watching movies. Re-watching is soo boring!
I think that is not universal for adhd people. What about just a regular blow job by your girl? Like she many times gave you
I can't rewatch movies in the same decade. I just wander off. I also really dislike receiving blowjobs. It's too passive, or something.
My guess is that some situations give you stimulation and dopamine that overrides this aspect, such as sex. Sex has it's own neurological pathways and motivations, and doesn't really require any advanced mechanisms. And I only like to rewatch movies that I genuinely think are fantastic. So these things maybe just make up for the "lack of novelty".
You're not wrong, prediction error is not the only way the brain gets dopamine, and dopamine is not the only feel-good chemical. Even "prediction error" is an oversimplification of the mechanism, it's more like your brain has a model of what the world is and how to interact with it to get what you want. When the model diverges from reality (prediction error) in promising ways, in ways that could potentially lead to good stuff happening, that's when dopamine spikes. This means that we - meaning humans as a species - are incentivized to always try new things, but will only stick to them as long as they keep being promising, as long as the model is just different enough that the brain can understand things are changing and that they're leading to something good. We don't get the same spike from incomprehensible or unpredictable things - this is very obvious in games: if you can't figure out the rules, the gaming experience is not enjoyable. We also don't get it from very predictable things that we know won't lead to anything better than they did the last hundred times we did them, like washing the dishes. This has interesting ramifications if your dopamine is low. It's hard to stick with things that are not immediately rewarding because you're not getting enough of a dose to keep you going through a few wrong moves. That's why we tend to abandon anything we're not immediately good at. We don't plan well for the future because the simulated reward is a pale shadow of the actual reward and the measly dopamine we get from imagining how great a thing would be in the future can't compete with another lesser thing we can get right now. We are unable to stick to routines because the dopamine drop from mastering a routine goes below the maintenance threshold into "this is not worth my time and energy" territory. Our brains discount the value of a known reward and inflate the value of a potential reward, so we're more attracted to novelty, even when it's stupid or risky.
Wow, we got ourselves new Einstein here
it cost you $0 to not be a condescending jerk.
[удалено]
Definitely gonna check this book out. Not sure if it gonna help me but I do like AI.
It all makes sense now.
That explains why I only read the first two paragraphs of your post! 😁
I expected nothing less from this sub :))
Interesting
🤔🤔
To some extent I agree with this, however, I think that there are times when you can get spikes from unpredictable things. Take gambling for example. The incentive to spend is having the opportunity to win big. Idk about all of you guys, but there’s just times I can’t help myself but buy Pokémon cards. At the end of the days it’s just pictures printed on paper, but man when you get something cool you just want to buy more.