I don't know if I have ADHD, but if I do an online survey it says I most probably definitely do. I was never diagnosed as a child because I largely functioned as a kid and was quiet and non-disruptive, but looking back the signs were all there.
Fast forward as an adult I have a number of coping mechanisms and one of them is to have something on in the background. I have never associated the effectiveness with the noise itself, but rather with something that is keeping part of my brain quiet. It prevents my mind from wandering. It is ideally something I already know. Like a show I have seen before or a podcast that I am okay not fully retaining. Not enough stimulation and I get distracted easily, too much stimulation and I shut down completely. Music doesn't usually work for me.
> I was never diagnosed as a child because I largely functioned as a kid and was quiet and non-disruptive
Those pesky ADHD-Impulsive giving us a bad name.
Same here, diagnosed but I was the most calm and polite kid ever. The hyperactivity is inside my head. There's a hamster running in circles at 9000 RPM and it's never taken a break.
"You're overthinking it", people say to me. You have no idea.
I’m guilty of overthinking everything. It’s come in handy as a programmer but it tends to hold me back socially.
I’d often think about social interactions ahead of time. My brain would create countless situations that I’d play out. Once I exhausted one situation, I jump into analyzing the next possible situation. On and on I’d go.
I’ve only recently been able to quiet down my beehive brain a bit thanks to a few realizations I came to about the damage it was doing to me:
- Even after analyzing 100 different possibilities, reality would often be much different than the scenarios I thought about.
- When the situation didn’t play out exactly as I’d imagined, I’d still react instantly without thinking through the new variances. In my foolishness, the unexpected scenario seemed close enough to the ones I had already thought about, so I’d respond off the cuff.
In reality, things were different enough that a pause to think would’ve been better.
- Thinking through 100 different scenarios also meant going through the emotional baggage that came with them. In my mind, sometimes people reacted positively and sometimes negatively.
Imagining all the negative ways someone could react would lead me to attributing negative feelings to them, even though they haven’t responded negatively.
On the flip side, if I attributed a specific positive outcome to someone that didn’t live up to my exact interpretation, I’d end up feeling disappointed with an outcome I should’ve been happy with.
- Lastly, I’d push to resolve a situation immediately because I didn’t want to go through another beehive of scenarios while waiting to continue the conversation another time.
Sometimes that push to resolve the conflict resulted in a positive breakthrough. However, other times the person would agree to a certain resolution due to sheer exhaustion which leave us with an unsustainable outcome.
Of course, there were other things that helped calm my brain down. Things that helped me take a step towards these realizations and act on them.
Hopefully, my comment can be one of those steps for someone else.
That sounds similar to me. I was diagnosed unexpectedly at 38 and it changed my life. There is a good chance your internalised coping mechanisms are adding undue stress to your nervous system, making you tired and depressed, and ironically exacerbating the conditions for symptoms to become more disruptive (when you're tired, aren't eating properly, hyperfocusing too much and wearing yourself out, working late nights to catch up and not getting enough sleep, rinse, repeat, constant burnout).
If it's within your means to do so, I can't stress enough how much better it is knowing, for sure.
Same, except aged 28. I completely randomly happened to stumble upon a detailed description of inattentive ADHD, and had the thought, "Hmm, I wonder how doctors are able to differentiate between someone who has these symptoms and has ADHD, and someone like me who has these symptoms but doesn't have ADHD."
Then it hit me like a brick wall. Now I understand the phrase "it was like time stopped." Blinders came off and I felt like I re-evaluated every life experience I'd had in about 30 seconds. Two doctors appointments later I was hearing "Oh yes, you certainly have intense ADHD, the question is just how intense."
ADHD affects so many things as you mention. For me, getting treated has nearly entirely eliminated all forms of anxiety. For instance, I was a socially anxious mess in any sort of group setting; now I intentionally seek out conversations and enjoy telling stories. Some days I hardly recognize the old me. Strange feeling.
But yes, diagnosis + treatment highly recommended. Untreated ADHD increases your risk factors for so many things -- for instance, substance issues (NIH estimates fully 50% of people with substance issues have ADHD whether they know it or not).
I've mentioned this before but there are serious warnings against getting tested in Sweden.
I was told that it can affect my health insurance, my mortgage and that I can't hold certain licenses (Pilot, HGV).
There are some direct consequences to being diagnosed and some indirect ones; and they warn that once the process of getting diagnosed starts; it cannot be stopped.
So, of course, I didn't seek a diagnosis- despite having many ADHD markers.
I was diagnosed but also have High Blood Pressure (HBP), genetics, and most of the meds we tested cause an uncomfortable rise in pressure that just wasn't worth it.
My coping mechanisms are what I have left I suppose.
I knew beforehand even (guessed at least), but I put off doing anything about it. I didn't realize how much it was affecting me. And how many unhealthy coping mechanisms I had built up in my life.
FWIW, this is exactly what it's like for me too - "Not enough stimulation and I get distracted easily, too much stimulation and I shut down completely."
I was diagnosed at 22, ironically after I graduated from college after struggling to study effectively and fortunately by complete willpower and energy drinks managed to have decent grades.
Get a recommendation for a neuropsych and get a diagnosis. People here love to objectify and hate on anyone using stimulants. A 5mg dose of stimulants daily has quite literally changed my life. You don't have to live wondering what you could've been cognitively capable of.
Agree, the real wake up for me was when I wasn't just able to focus at work, but felt calm on my drive home, didn't feel anxious while sitting and talking over dinner, etc.. My initial goal was to leverage the racy, focused energy of stimulants to get work done, but I ended up most enjoying feeling calm and present hours after that part has faded.
I've been diagnosed with ADHD and I have the exact same coping mechanism. Another I have is to use Pomodoro timers and todo lists religiously. What other coping mechanisms do you have?
Similar. I put every appointment or meeting in my calendar immediately, take as many notes as I can, and keep to do lists by due date. For me a lot of it is just offloading things to my phone / computer because I know I will forget. If something isn't in my calendar it might as well not be happening. Doesn't matter what it is.
lofi hip hop seems to work pretty well, but there usually are three stages:
- I don't get into the groove despite the music
- Something clicks and I get into the groove
- I'm so deeply in the groove that even lofi hip hop bothers me, so I turn it off and go ham
Also I find it funny that lofi hip hop has an alternate title of "beats to relax/study to"--I used to listen to it while studying in college, but now I use it for working on personal projects or at work.
I really like 'Groove Salad' from SomaFM for when I need to focus, it helps get me into a better flow state than anything else I've tried. However, there are times when I know I need to turn it on but don't/can't which is less helpful!
I fully understand. I do much of the same. Work from home. Keep the fan on at all times for the noise. Have one monitor playing content-less videos on a loop. For me personally, train cab ride videos and asmr massage do the trick. There's nothing to follow. The content is relaxing. It does the trick. I used to follow a couple of Buddhist podcasts where the speaker is calm & measured. Never paid much attention to the content, but the voices helped immensely.
Anyways, thanks for sharing. It's a little good to know I'm not unique in these tactics.
I work in an open-plan office and headphones with brown-noise or the right-type of music is absolutely essential. The thing is, you can only do that for so long. At some point you get tired of the headphones.
I feel like I might "snap" one of these days and start telling people to STFU. The noise is dominated by a couple of people who, for whatever reason, can't seem to modulate their volume. Perhaps there's a name for that disorder as well?
In the meantime, my workplace has "focus rooms" which I use a few times a week. Since there's a box of tissues in there, I refer to them as crying rooms :-).
How do you feel afterwards? Let's say after a hard working session with music on. Because I just like you, use music for concentration and I can pull some long hours, but afterwards I have difficulties calming down. Maybe it's because I am tired, but I have some suspicion that the dopamine hit from music might be the culprit.
Didn't realise this was a common coping mechanism till I asked around and both my brothers do it (Adult ADHD diagnosis) and one friend (Also diagnosed).
There are 7 distinct types of ADHD according to recent brain scan research. you have what I have which is type two with internal HD not external HD.
I did find that Rhodiola, Green Tea extract, Raw Cacao, and low dose of L-DOPA, and
Lions mane does make an impact in helping me handle it as now I notice I am starting to get to the point of mind-seeing code which is a first with me in that I have 4+decades of my ADHD being uncontrolled(mind seeing code happens at about the
6 month point after you get the right med doses settled)
What's working for me is listening to the same lofi channel, which helps me focus without being disturbed by the music because it's, hmm, generically bland. Like some brain filling. But still enjoyable. (a bit harsh definition for a genre I like)
I become too emotionally invested when I listen to any other kind of music.
I've been diagnosed 3 years ago and I used to use the exact same coping mechanism as you do. I'd watch a show I've seen before while working on things. Music also worked for me to a lesser degrees but only if there's no vocals.
Getting diagnosed was one of the best thing I could have done. Knowing for sure, being able to use medication (although I limit very strictly how much I use) has been super helpful. I got tested privately, without involving health insurance. I didn't want it to be on any public records.
I feel the same way, but still wanted music in the background. This channel was a great balance since I can't understand the lyrics, but the tunes are catchy enough to hum to sometimes. https://www.youtube.com/@MyAnalogJournal
I have ADHD and I straight-up don't do silence. Between restless brain and tinnitus, actual silence, or anything with a noise floor below ~15dB, just doesn't sit right with me. 20-30dB is about ideal. Especially when trying to sleep. I have some sort of fan/filter in just about every room. When I'm working, I'm almost always listening to music (unless I'm way over stimulated).
It probably started when I was much younger with much worse asthma and always had a HEPA filter running in the background. Eventually this turned into basically always having some kind of fan in my primary locations. Right now I dig the Coway air filters on low or medium.
Even beyond the alleged "noise floor dopamine boost", I find some kind of background whoosh really nice for masking otherwise variable sounds, such as cars, airplanes, and the wind, which are far more distracting.
10/10 would recommend running some sort of air filter all the time. Plus, cleaner air (air pollution has all kinds of bad effects).
> It probably started when I was much younger with much worse asthma and always had a HEPA filter running in the background. Eventually this turned into basically always having some kind of fan in my primary locations.
For tinnitus, try massaging the back of your head/neck. Tightness there can be the cause in some people.
Reddit posted a similar trick a few years ago, but in my experience, massage seems to be just as good, so if you haven't tried it, do so and you might get some relief from that.
Do you mean in ear headphones with music or actual ear plugs with music on a stereo?
I don’t know why but I feel a million times better with ear plugs in. I had these etymotic ear plugs that were more like sound filters for years before I lost them, and I loved them so much. I’d wear them with headphones over top while working for this oddly silent and muffled sound experience.
I didn’t replace the etymotics because my wife was too embarrassed to be around me having these things in. But at a restaurant or other loud places they were an absolute saviour.
I use AirPods in a similar way, but it’s not as nice. Sometimes I actually just want plain old ear plugs. Even so, the AirPods are a lot better than nothing at all. I use them with no sound perhaps more often than I do with sound.
Any slight sudden noise also tends to wake me up, last year I bought some Bose Sleepbuds 2 and they have been fantastic, they play a range of sounds such as white noise while your sleep and it really blocks out everything else.
I've used them to sleep like a baby in a tent at a music festival when all my campmates woke up tired and complaining from lack of sleep.
Ditto and a plug for https://austinair.com/ I run it in my office on low during the day and sleep with it at night. Its a sizable investment but WOW its been worth it. I'm on year 12 and its still going strong.
Many people use sound machines to drown out background noise so it doesn’t wake you up.
You can however train yourself on to a sound machine or off of one. Some people can’t fall asleep unless the tv is on or the radio or a podcast… same principle. But it really only makes sense if you environment is quiet in general.
I think it's consistent sound/noise that matters. My Dad worked on a ship and he said when he was trying to sleep the worst sounds were intermittent. He preferred a constant sound no matter what it was.
Yeah, in other news many environments are badly engineered, badly outfitted, and their inhabitants are content to let their artificially occupied mind anguish with squealing refrigerators, air conditioners, notifications, sleep issues, illumination issues, blood sugar spikes and trenches, social uncertainty and misplaced conscientiousness, and so on without attributing their focus issues to anything more specific than "something wrong" or, in medical terms, "disordered."
This is awesome, wish there was a way to turn it on and off from Control Center without having to set it to triple-click side button (would prefer to avoid accidental activation from the button but still have easier access to this feature)
I have been using a 90-minute Brown Noise loop on Spotify, but even though it is downloaded on my phone, I have to connect to the internet to start using it, which can lead to distractions when messages start pouring in.
Why don't you just download music? like an mp3? and put it on your phone? you can easily rip tracks off any source (youtube), I never understood why or how spotify became the choice
This also helps cover up constant early morning construction and traffic.
If I can help it I just use:
play -n synth brown
on any linux system with sox installed... it's definitely the cleanest sound I've found.
Problem with most phone programs is that despite brown noise being comically easy to generate live, they record a clip and then loop it so there's weird artifacts.
I honestly don't know why I don't have the ability to run such a trivial command for an open source system on my phone. If I paid for a phone app to make noise it'd be inferior for money. I don't know why it's not at least equal for money.
I tried this but the sound is too… white? Is there a way of making it deeper? I’m not familiar with Sox at all.
EDIT: actually in that short time I got what I needed: play -n -n --combine merge synth brownnoise band -n 550 550
Put it in a .command file, renamed it as .app, dragged it to the dock, renamed it .command, and now I can quickly trigger it from the dock at any time.
I use a surprisingly complete shell on iPhone to synchronize git repo.
For some reason, that shell can go out of his own box, so he can write into obsidian files for instance.
The play command trigger the phone media player but there is a package manager and it’s akin to git-bash for instance. It ‘s provably a pain but it boils down to find the right binaries.
It’s called “a-shell”, there is others. I use this one for simple things but it can run cron for instance. It kinda changed how I use my old crappy iPhone. ( moving file around )
Is there anyway to create an http stream of your output?
I have a home automation on Hubitat to play a 10-hour brown noise file, hosted on a home Ubuntu server, created in Audition to play for night time on a Sonos speaker.
Would love to get rid of the file and just get a live generated output.
Honestly your solution is probably already the simplest unless you're short for disk space. Maybe someone knows a way to make Ubuntu create a special file that contains a buffer with brown noise, like one of those old tape to CD converters, so that the system sees a music file but it just keeps going. It sounds like a lot of work.
Using 'play -n synth brown' is easy if it's an option. I'd probably use a sound file if it were harder.
Slightly tangential but this reminds me of the short story "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut [1]:
> In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic. [2]
Maybe the excerpt from the Wikipedia article I used was a bit too subtle, but the similarity is, in the story they are using random noise coming through earphones to suppress thoughts ("loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people").
ADHD is a "disorder" that is predicated on "this person's behavior annoys people around him and therefore should be corrected."
ADHD is only a disorder because human pegs must be pounded into the square holes of class in a sterile schoolroom behind bars, during daylight hours for much of the year, in preparation for white-collar office jobs that many of them won't achieve, but nevertheless you must sit down, pay attention to lectures and study irrelevant things.
And if you can't pay attention, don't take away their computers, video games, or reduce their screen time, just pump them full of amphetamines until they're so drowsy during the day they're just struggling to fall asleep.
ADHD is very Harrison Bergeron, and the schizophrenic Vonnegut knew exactly what he was writing about.
I don't have any sources other than anecdotal, but I'm under the impression many are diagnosed with ADHD as a result of behavior shown in school.
It's almost like, ADHD is the disease you have when you're "unable to do consistent & focused work". Obviously medically it's some dysfunction in dopamine regulation, but how many underpaid overworked teachers/parents have access to equipment that would actually measure that? Maybe some kids are gasp bored in school, or shudder don't mesh with the thought-system of menial productivity the school -> work pipeline tries to instill.
Speaking as an adult diagnosee, whose diagnosis had nothing to do with the behavioral problems in the DSM other than finding a way to fit my actual symptoms to diagnostic criteria, with a caring and mindful intake doctor and then a psychiatrist…
I agree the diagnostics are unhelpful. I think takes like this are equally if not more unhelpful. I definitely struggled with boredom and didn’t mesh with the design of my educational programs… but I also struggled intensely with anxiety and depression, both very deeply rooted in my ADHD experience. I struggled with them for decades before I understood what my experience was and found helpful treatment. I may well have suffered a much less severe and much shorter time had I not had a parent who was just as dismissive of the actual disorder I experience.
Your take is the same as the diagnostics: attributing it to externally observed childhood behavior that doesn’t suit adults. Meanwhile adults with undiagnosed and untreated ADHD experience higher anxiety and depression, higher suicide rates, higher rates of substance abuse. We’re permanently in a state of trauma.
Instead of rescuing kids from symptoms assigned to them by adults, if you want to help kids with ADHD, help them have a voice about what they feel and need.
If it's not a powerful enough effect to disorder your life, or you've developed adequate coping mechanisms, the diagnosis isn't appropriate. You can have people with the same subjective experience, same "symptoms" and one can be considered to have adhd and the other not. If you change your life in such a way that the effects you have are no long disruptive to it, don't negatively affect you, it's not adhd anymore.
What is a disorder or not is determined by the environment, not the individual. The social model of disability applies just as much to mental as physical.
I use this all the time, long before the article. White nose improves focus in everyone, not just ADHD folks.
This workflow is part of my standard work. If I have a document to read, a code review, or something that’s not mechanical coding (which I use music for), brown noise helps increase focus.
That’s super interesting! I’ve noticed that I really enjoy the background sounds iPhone has when mixed with music. Helps me focus on house chores like those in the article.
I wonder if this is the reason lofi music has taken off in a big way with the static in the background - (something we’re experimenting with at Double https://doubleapp.xyz)
Funny that you mention pink noise. After reading the headline alone, I wondered if pink noise had been considered. I find sometimes brown noise works well, and sometimes pink noise works well, depending on mood. White noise is almost always too harsh for me.
I also use an app called Chroma Doze from F-Droid, which can generate different spectrum noise. My only gripe with it is there's no "presets", or no way to export/import presents.
You’re on to something! The idea behind Double addresses a problem I‘ve been struggling with for a long time. The question is how to get it to take off - it needs scale and reach, network effects to really work well I believe. Maybe piggy back on existing communities?
wtf? the Kia thing is so left field from cars that I thought this was some other company using that name along with the car company, but I saw the logo and realized it's the same shit.
I think car makers often do "surprising" marketing campaigns -- more often than companies selling other products.
I would guess it's because buying a car is a very big purchasing decision for most people. You can't really sell them on impulse, to people who aren't in the market.
So car makers may rely more on advertising that builds their brand, rather than convincing you to buy a specific product today.
Building a toy app that people actually want to play with is a great way to get your brand name and logo visible installed semi-permanently on people (and their devices).
Readit News
Fast forward as an adult I have a number of coping mechanisms and one of them is to have something on in the background. I have never associated the effectiveness with the noise itself, but rather with something that is keeping part of my brain quiet. It prevents my mind from wandering. It is ideally something I already know. Like a show I have seen before or a podcast that I am okay not fully retaining. Not enough stimulation and I get distracted easily, too much stimulation and I shut down completely. Music doesn't usually work for me.
Those pesky ADHD-Impulsive giving us a bad name.
Same here, diagnosed but I was the most calm and polite kid ever. The hyperactivity is inside my head. There's a hamster running in circles at 9000 RPM and it's never taken a break.
"You're overthinking it", people say to me. You have no idea.
I’d often think about social interactions ahead of time. My brain would create countless situations that I’d play out. Once I exhausted one situation, I jump into analyzing the next possible situation. On and on I’d go.
I’ve only recently been able to quiet down my beehive brain a bit thanks to a few realizations I came to about the damage it was doing to me:
- Even after analyzing 100 different possibilities, reality would often be much different than the scenarios I thought about.
- When the situation didn’t play out exactly as I’d imagined, I’d still react instantly without thinking through the new variances. In my foolishness, the unexpected scenario seemed close enough to the ones I had already thought about, so I’d respond off the cuff.
In reality, things were different enough that a pause to think would’ve been better.
- Thinking through 100 different scenarios also meant going through the emotional baggage that came with them. In my mind, sometimes people reacted positively and sometimes negatively.
Imagining all the negative ways someone could react would lead me to attributing negative feelings to them, even though they haven’t responded negatively.
On the flip side, if I attributed a specific positive outcome to someone that didn’t live up to my exact interpretation, I’d end up feeling disappointed with an outcome I should’ve been happy with.
- Lastly, I’d push to resolve a situation immediately because I didn’t want to go through another beehive of scenarios while waiting to continue the conversation another time.
Sometimes that push to resolve the conflict resulted in a positive breakthrough. However, other times the person would agree to a certain resolution due to sheer exhaustion which leave us with an unsustainable outcome.
Of course, there were other things that helped calm my brain down. Things that helped me take a step towards these realizations and act on them.
Hopefully, my comment can be one of those steps for someone else.
If it's within your means to do so, I can't stress enough how much better it is knowing, for sure.
Then it hit me like a brick wall. Now I understand the phrase "it was like time stopped." Blinders came off and I felt like I re-evaluated every life experience I'd had in about 30 seconds. Two doctors appointments later I was hearing "Oh yes, you certainly have intense ADHD, the question is just how intense."
ADHD affects so many things as you mention. For me, getting treated has nearly entirely eliminated all forms of anxiety. For instance, I was a socially anxious mess in any sort of group setting; now I intentionally seek out conversations and enjoy telling stories. Some days I hardly recognize the old me. Strange feeling.
But yes, diagnosis + treatment highly recommended. Untreated ADHD increases your risk factors for so many things -- for instance, substance issues (NIH estimates fully 50% of people with substance issues have ADHD whether they know it or not).
I was told that it can affect my health insurance, my mortgage and that I can't hold certain licenses (Pilot, HGV).
There are some direct consequences to being diagnosed and some indirect ones; and they warn that once the process of getting diagnosed starts; it cannot be stopped.
So, of course, I didn't seek a diagnosis- despite having many ADHD markers.
I was diagnosed but also have High Blood Pressure (HBP), genetics, and most of the meds we tested cause an uncomfortable rise in pressure that just wasn't worth it.
My coping mechanisms are what I have left I suppose.
I knew beforehand even (guessed at least), but I put off doing anything about it. I didn't realize how much it was affecting me. And how many unhealthy coping mechanisms I had built up in my life.
FWIW, this is exactly what it's like for me too - "Not enough stimulation and I get distracted easily, too much stimulation and I shut down completely."
Here's a couple of live streams I regularly listen to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4sJkuOPUP8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk
And here's a channel that as well as sometimes having a livestream regularly uploads ~1 mixes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCKbkDggYQ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GWyf-35QHI&t=2s
Get a recommendation for a neuropsych and get a diagnosis. People here love to objectify and hate on anyone using stimulants. A 5mg dose of stimulants daily has quite literally changed my life. You don't have to live wondering what you could've been cognitively capable of.
https://williambasinski.bandcamp.com/album/the-disintegratio...
The combination of noise, repetition, and minimal melody really helps me focus.
- I don't get into the groove despite the music
- Something clicks and I get into the groove
- I'm so deeply in the groove that even lofi hip hop bothers me, so I turn it off and go ham
Also I find it funny that lofi hip hop has an alternate title of "beats to relax/study to"--I used to listen to it while studying in college, but now I use it for working on personal projects or at work.
But if I listen to music with lyrics in language which I don't speak, then I don't get distracted.
Spanish mambo works well for me. Also I've recently listened to some operas.
Classical music is good and bad. A lot of classical has instruments that I don't like, and some of the music is too erratic for focus.
Music for Airports, with even less repetition.
https://www.generativemusic.com/bloom.html
Anyways, thanks for sharing. It's a little good to know I'm not unique in these tactics.
Music also works for me by triggering an emotional state that helps me focus.
I feel like I might "snap" one of these days and start telling people to STFU. The noise is dominated by a couple of people who, for whatever reason, can't seem to modulate their volume. Perhaps there's a name for that disorder as well?
In the meantime, my workplace has "focus rooms" which I use a few times a week. Since there's a box of tissues in there, I refer to them as crying rooms :-).
But my favorites, metal and reggeaton just distracts me too much because of the lyrics.
Didn't realise this was a common coping mechanism till I asked around and both my brothers do it (Adult ADHD diagnosis) and one friend (Also diagnosed).
Yes. I've listened to some albums 100s of times and they are so familiar they aren't distracting but actually help me focus.
If I listen to something interesting and new it's harder to focus. If I listen to primarily speech (Howard Stern, podcast, etc.) forget it.
I did find that Rhodiola, Green Tea extract, Raw Cacao, and low dose of L-DOPA, and Lions mane does make an impact in helping me handle it as now I notice I am starting to get to the point of mind-seeing code which is a first with me in that I have 4+decades of my ADHD being uncontrolled(mind seeing code happens at about the 6 month point after you get the right med doses settled)
What's working for me is listening to the same lofi channel, which helps me focus without being disturbed by the music because it's, hmm, generically bland. Like some brain filling. But still enjoyable. (a bit harsh definition for a genre I like)
I become too emotionally invested when I listen to any other kind of music.
So lofi for work!
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Getting diagnosed was one of the best thing I could have done. Knowing for sure, being able to use medication (although I limit very strictly how much I use) has been super helpful. I got tested privately, without involving health insurance. I didn't want it to be on any public records.
I had the same experience as a kid, but I didn't try the noise thing yet.
Mostly, because music leads to very emotional responses.
But, maybe I should try other "sounds". My mind keeps wandering all the time and it's quite stressful.
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It probably started when I was much younger with much worse asthma and always had a HEPA filter running in the background. Eventually this turned into basically always having some kind of fan in my primary locations. Right now I dig the Coway air filters on low or medium.
Even beyond the alleged "noise floor dopamine boost", I find some kind of background whoosh really nice for masking otherwise variable sounds, such as cars, airplanes, and the wind, which are far more distracting.
10/10 would recommend running some sort of air filter all the time. Plus, cleaner air (air pollution has all kinds of bad effects).
> It probably started when I was much younger with much worse asthma and always had a HEPA filter running in the background. Eventually this turned into basically always having some kind of fan in my primary locations.
Same exact experience.
Reddit posted a similar trick a few years ago, but in my experience, massage seems to be just as good, so if you haven't tried it, do so and you might get some relief from that.
At home best I’ve found is ear plugs with music in background.
Or I can take my medicine and the horrific pain of boredom goes away. I just get a few days of severe nerve pain throughout body.
I don’t know why but I feel a million times better with ear plugs in. I had these etymotic ear plugs that were more like sound filters for years before I lost them, and I loved them so much. I’d wear them with headphones over top while working for this oddly silent and muffled sound experience.
I didn’t replace the etymotics because my wife was too embarrassed to be around me having these things in. But at a restaurant or other loud places they were an absolute saviour.
I use AirPods in a similar way, but it’s not as nice. Sometimes I actually just want plain old ear plugs. Even so, the AirPods are a lot better than nothing at all. I use them with no sound perhaps more often than I do with sound.
What is this? I get the same experience and my docs haven’t given any explanation after multiple times bringing it to their attention.
As someone with both (and particularly bad tinnitus) I look forward to my new air filters/fans.
I've used them to sleep like a baby in a tent at a music festival when all my campmates woke up tired and complaining from lack of sleep.
When working I use Endel / Brain.fm.
You can however train yourself on to a sound machine or off of one. Some people can’t fall asleep unless the tv is on or the radio or a podcast… same principle. But it really only makes sense if you environment is quiet in general.
The paranoia of needing the inhaler due to allergies/whatever would itself trigger a panic attack.
Since my ADHD diagnosis (aged 38!) I can happily leave the house without the inhaler without fear of needing it - but only when I'm on stimulant meds.
The ADHD diagnosis has brought to light several things which I never knew would be connected.
The meds are life changing in many ways more than just help with concentration.
Go to Accessibility -> Audio/Visual -> Background Sounds -> Sound -> Dark Noise
After that go to Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Background Sound and you'll be able to activate the noise with a tripple side button click
[1] https://imgur.com/a/FhzjJmH
I have been using a 90-minute Brown Noise loop on Spotify, but even though it is downloaded on my phone, I have to connect to the internet to start using it, which can lead to distractions when messages start pouring in.
If I can help it I just use: play -n synth brown on any linux system with sox installed... it's definitely the cleanest sound I've found.
Problem with most phone programs is that despite brown noise being comically easy to generate live, they record a clip and then loop it so there's weird artifacts.
I honestly don't know why I don't have the ability to run such a trivial command for an open source system on my phone. If I paid for a phone app to make noise it'd be inferior for money. I don't know why it's not at least equal for money.
The command I'm using is `play -c 5 -n synth brown vol -20dB`.
[1] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php
EDIT: actually in that short time I got what I needed: play -n -n --combine merge synth brownnoise band -n 550 550
Put it in a .command file, renamed it as .app, dragged it to the dock, renamed it .command, and now I can quickly trigger it from the dock at any time.
Thanks a lot!
If you come up with anything please let us know.
[1] https://www.cloudacm.com/?p=3145
[2] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php
For some reason, that shell can go out of his own box, so he can write into obsidian files for instance.
The play command trigger the phone media player but there is a package manager and it’s akin to git-bash for instance. It ‘s provably a pain but it boils down to find the right binaries.
It’s called “a-shell”, there is others. I use this one for simple things but it can run cron for instance. It kinda changed how I use my old crappy iPhone. ( moving file around )
I have a home automation on Hubitat to play a 10-hour brown noise file, hosted on a home Ubuntu server, created in Audition to play for night time on a Sonos speaker.
Would love to get rid of the file and just get a live generated output.
Using 'play -n synth brown' is easy if it's an option. I'd probably use a sound file if it were harder.
Deleted Comment
> In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic. [2]
[1] https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
That's a little more than slightly. I've got no clue what in the article brought that up for you or how you're relating it back.
ADHD is only a disorder because human pegs must be pounded into the square holes of class in a sterile schoolroom behind bars, during daylight hours for much of the year, in preparation for white-collar office jobs that many of them won't achieve, but nevertheless you must sit down, pay attention to lectures and study irrelevant things.
And if you can't pay attention, don't take away their computers, video games, or reduce their screen time, just pump them full of amphetamines until they're so drowsy during the day they're just struggling to fall asleep.
ADHD is very Harrison Bergeron, and the schizophrenic Vonnegut knew exactly what he was writing about.
It's almost like, ADHD is the disease you have when you're "unable to do consistent & focused work". Obviously medically it's some dysfunction in dopamine regulation, but how many underpaid overworked teachers/parents have access to equipment that would actually measure that? Maybe some kids are gasp bored in school, or shudder don't mesh with the thought-system of menial productivity the school -> work pipeline tries to instill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js4NiTFq9Pw
I agree the diagnostics are unhelpful. I think takes like this are equally if not more unhelpful. I definitely struggled with boredom and didn’t mesh with the design of my educational programs… but I also struggled intensely with anxiety and depression, both very deeply rooted in my ADHD experience. I struggled with them for decades before I understood what my experience was and found helpful treatment. I may well have suffered a much less severe and much shorter time had I not had a parent who was just as dismissive of the actual disorder I experience.
Your take is the same as the diagnostics: attributing it to externally observed childhood behavior that doesn’t suit adults. Meanwhile adults with undiagnosed and untreated ADHD experience higher anxiety and depression, higher suicide rates, higher rates of substance abuse. We’re permanently in a state of trauma.
Instead of rescuing kids from symptoms assigned to them by adults, if you want to help kids with ADHD, help them have a voice about what they feel and need.
If it's not a powerful enough effect to disorder your life, or you've developed adequate coping mechanisms, the diagnosis isn't appropriate. You can have people with the same subjective experience, same "symptoms" and one can be considered to have adhd and the other not. If you change your life in such a way that the effects you have are no long disruptive to it, don't negatively affect you, it's not adhd anymore.
What is a disorder or not is determined by the environment, not the individual. The social model of disability applies just as much to mental as physical.
Donate if you can, it's a great resource. No affiliation, just a happy user.
I use this all the time, long before the article. White nose improves focus in everyone, not just ADHD folks.
This workflow is part of my standard work. If I have a document to read, a code review, or something that’s not mechanical coding (which I use music for), brown noise helps increase focus.
It feels smoother and more relaxing to me.
I wonder if this is the reason lofi music has taken off in a big way with the static in the background - (something we’re experimenting with at Double https://doubleapp.xyz)
Edit: also remembered about the Kia instrument that popped up - it’s based on making music with pink noise https://www.kia.com/us/en/movement/our-instrument
I also use an app called Chroma Doze from F-Droid, which can generate different spectrum noise. My only gripe with it is there's no "presets", or no way to export/import presents.
I'm going to check that app out - thanks for sharing!
Totally agreed on the network effects point - that’s why we made the Double Communities and are focusing on growing those!
What's going on?
So car makers may rely more on advertising that builds their brand, rather than convincing you to buy a specific product today.
Building a toy app that people actually want to play with is a great way to get your brand name and logo visible installed semi-permanently on people (and their devices).