I have moderately severe ADHD, and have good reasons to not use medication.
My first response to this is that it solves problems that I don't have, and ignores the ones I do have.
Organizing my day on paper is trivial. I'm also married to someone with a good partnership, and we offload different types of tasks to each other. She might enjoy having software assistants to be more productive, but I don't need that. I have her.
The trick for me is that it is important that my life be organized around engaging with things that I want to do. And thereby having my wants reinforce executive control so that I can do what I think that I should. This involves a lot of managing of my emotional state, and a lot of REJECTING of outside demands by the world that I conform to how the world wants me to be. I see nothing about this app that helps me do either thing.
Yes, yes, I know the idea of eliminating distractions so that I can focus. Honestly, that's crap that leads to disasters every time I try it. If I have positive motivations to do X, distractions are easy to set aside. If motivations are negative, I will be unable to resist creating distractions. And a straightjacket that prevents that leads to insanity.
Which returns me to my point. The key, for me, in handling ADHD is emotional tools to find positive motivations, and social tools to resist the world attempting to load me with tasks through negative motivations.
> it solves problems that I don't have, and ignores the ones I do have
This is exactly what I suspect of virtually any kind of app, software, platform, etc. I’m advertised as intended to help me with ADHD. ADHD is expresses itself in such a broad variety of ways. I just don’t trust that any kind of app is actually so tuned into my experience of ADHD that it could actually be helpful.
I hesitate to say this: but, it’s hard hard not to feel offended at times by the ways in which ADHD appears to be radically oversimplified to fit into a narrow product specification and pitched to people who might really need help.
The problem with any kind of organisational system like GTD, software like Rescuetime, org-mode, and probably this thing, is that they don't really help me because I don't even have the executive function to get started using them in a structured way in the first place. I'm unable to establish routines, and using these things is just yet another routine to fail at.
At least this seems to be free to use. I really hate when solutions like this cost money and advertise specifically for ADHD. Because, being impulsive, of course I sign up for the thing, use it for maybe a couple days, then stop using it, but forget to unsubscribe for like 5 months, wasting a bunch of money...
I agree with some exceptions.
Apps that take the friction out of certain tedious processes could actually help. Think about an app to order the medication easily or an app to set up an appointment with a psychotherapist easily.
Think about how those neo bank applications make banking accessible and easier to people (in certain countries or circumstances).
For me, even though I generally dislike apps to do certain processes, I really think digitalization and the fact that I can almost all "adulting responsibility tasks" online is very helpful considering the ADHD.
So I think these services always take the wrong approach. Instead of promising to make the ADHD disappear or take a disciplined all-or-nothing blocking approach, they need to consider the fact that people with ADHD are aware that it's a thing they have to life with and generally try to optimize their lives to best cope with it.
So any such company should probably take on whatever tasks one has to do in life to survive in general and try to make all of that more accessible and disability-friendly to be of most help.
And we still live in a world with a lot of stigma, the ideas that adult ADHD isn't a thing or that medication is outright bad or literally cheating in life, or that ADHD doesn't exist or is overdiagnosed. There's A LOT to tackle in this lane.
Productivity apps miss the mark but I get good value out of Forest on Android, just that slight nudge reminding I just absentmindedly picked up my phone to doom scroll and it's only been 12 seconds since the last time I tried is valuable when the executive function is really bad
I didn't know up until the last few years that I had ADHD, and had just always assumed that I was just crap at organisation and lazy.
I've been through a degree, a masters and years of work using every trick in the book to force myself to work and not get distracted. I have super detailed plans, all of my work is accountable, I write down everything I have to do. It goes on and on how I micro-manage my day just to force myself to work or do my tasks.
Then I got an ADHD diagnosis, started medication and my life changed. Suddenly I can just sit down and get to work instead of fighting myself to put the phone down and close reddit. I don't get up and wander off unexpectedly, I don't feel a physical urge to walk off out of my seat and in my 30s I realised that's what normal is. I don't put off every little 5 minute task, I just do them without a second thought.
Sure, I can survive without the meds, but life is so much easier not having to fight against myself for every single damn task.
I also take antidpressants and I view them in the same way. The tablets don't "cure" me, but they clear my head enough so that I can make the conscious decision to improve my behaviour.
I assumed I wasn’t applying myself, or didn’t use the right learning style, or whatever else was being offered as a suggestion. It didn’t help that I was a kid in the early 90s, when Ritalin was getting big, and some parents (like mine) were staunchly opposed to medicating kids for supposed normal behavior.
I found much later in life that the only things that consistently motivated me were a looming deadline, or severe consequences to failure. The lone exception was computer puzzles, by which I mean things like “how do I get this obscure Chinese sound card running in Gentoo,” or “how does a file actually get written to a drive? oh look blkparse…”
About a year ago, I got an ADHD diagnosis for primarily inattentive type, and my life changed. There have been some tweaks here and there to medication and dosage, but the amount of focus I can now devote to tasks which previously would be monstrously difficult - like writing Jira stories - is amazing.
It's crazy, huh? Nobody would ever say "how dare physically disabled people rely on things like wheelchairs to be less disabled" (well, nobody I would consider worth listening to at least). Yet medication for ADHD, depression, and other mental health issues are stigmatized.
> My first response to this is that it solves problems that I don't have, and ignores the ones I do have.
That's the hallmark of applying technology for technology's sake, which is a lot of what engineers and tech entrepreneurs do nowadays. Especially for technologies that are getting a lot of hype. AI is blockchain all over again, a lot of "let me try to shoehorn this sexy tech where it doesn't really belong."
You nailed it on the end for me as an Adult with ADHD diagnosed in my 30s.
Motivation has been my biggest A-Ha with ADHD and trying my absolute best to align what I do with what I want to do otherwise I am setting myself up for failure and others for disappointment with me.
Motivation has always been my biggest issue, even for relatively small tasks like picking up a wrapper after I've snacked. It's not just the big things like trying to concentrate at work, it even stops you doing relatively short, low effort tasks until everything builds up or it becomes too late
I'm hesitant to make any assumptions about your decision to not medicate, but if it has anything to do with addictive properties, you should look into guanfacine. I have very severe ADHD and was unable to use the common medications for the reason listed. This last year I stumbled upon guanfacine, which is usually a blood pressure reduction med, but is prescribed off-label as an ADHD med. It has no noticeable effects other than having basically been a miracle for me in its reduction of my ADHD symptoms. No addictive properties. YMMV but it changed my life after 41 years of struggling with ADHD.
Guanfacine is approved to treat ADHD in the United States and several other countries.
Technically, extended-release Guanfacine is approved because that's what was used in the trials. The brand name is Intuniv and the generic is Guanfacine ER.
The generic guanfacine (non-ER) can also be used, though technically off label. The only difference is that it must be dosed twice a day instead of once a day and the absorption is different so you can't do a 1:1 translation of your dose to the ER.
Now that Guanfacine ER is generic and cheap, you might want to consider it for once daily dosing.
The non-stimulant medications are very good, but require some patience to get started with. Too many people give up in the first week or month because the side effects haven't settled yet. Straterra (Atomoxetine) is another one that can take 1-2 months for good efficacy. Clinical trials show the positive effects continue to build over the course of a year. Surprisingly, Atomoxetine has a lower relapse rate after discontinuation too, suggesting it might be making some long-term positive changes to the brain. This is a nice contrast to stimulants, where the patient becomes essentially dependent on the medication and can go through a protracted rebound if they ever have to discontinue.
I was previously on Guanfacine in combination with Adderall for my blood pressure so I don't have experience taking it solely. I did learn I cannot take stimulants at all, it takes my anxiety to 1000 and makes me a complete a-hole around my house which helps nobody.
Can you elaborate which ADHD symptoms it has helped the most? I'm currently not taking any meds but I can't focus or concentrate to save my life which makes a demanding IT job difficult at times.
As someone in the spectrum with Demand Avoidance, guanfacine has been a godsend. It's cheap, not controlled, and for me, it works better than any stimulant in regulating my attention.
My problems are loss of appetite, trouble sleeping (leading to sleep deprivation that itself causes loss of executive control), and irritability. This is in addition to the fact that I have high blood pressure, and would rather not have to increase the cocktail of medications that I'm taking for that.
This needs more context, because unlike stimulants, you can't quit guanfacine instantly or you'll feel pretty ill. You have to taper off it for a week or two.
Also, you can't drink on it (enjoyably) and it made me feel tired and emotional.
There are many more offlabel meds for ADHD eg Bupropion. Daniel Amen gives tailored recommendations for meds and supplements for each type in his book Healing ADD. There is one type he called Ring Of Fire, which can only be helped without meds. Highly recommended!
This hits the nail on the head for me and why productivity apps usually aren't worth much.
> This involves a lot of managing of my emotional state, and a lot of REJECTING of outside demands by the world that I conform to how the world wants me to be.
A hallmark of ADHD is emotional dysregulation and impulsivity, so what exactly does rejecting "outside demands" look like? How exactly are you managing emotional state if not with medication? Ironically the only way I've managed my emotional state off medication is by conforming to outside demands and ignoring my individual desires/motivations as much as possible.
An example of rejecting outside demands is seeking out work environments where I can cooperatively seek out tasks, rather than having someone try to order me to do what they want me to do. If I encounter someone who wants to order me around, I'll ignore if possible. And if not possible, I'll change jobs before complying.
Trying to do things because someone is pushing me to do them will result in my becoming resentful, and losing my ability to get into an effective state of flow. But enough places in tech provide enough flexibility that I've been able to find places where I can be productive. And, in a virtuous cycle, productivity can make all sorts of oddities acceptable in an employee.
As for emotional dysregulation, let me address that. ADHD is caused by weak executive function. People with ADHD are slow to realize that we SHOULD do X, and the SHOULD is fairly weak. Therefore it becomes hard to resist emotions telling us we want to do Y instead.
I have two tools to address that.
The first is that at a purely emotional level, I strive to be fairly balanced. I work to address things that cause me negative emotions, like resentment, so that I don't have negative emotions to fight against.
The second is that I attach my "shoulds" to my understanding of what I actually want and care about. As a result the idea "I should X" is reinforced by a DESIRE to do X. And this emotional reinforcement makes it easy to do it.
Ironically, it is always easier to motivate myself in the short term with negative emotions. But the effect of doing so is a breakdown of the positive feedback loop that I'm using to maintain myself. Thus forcing myself only works for a limited time, and then falls apart. And so that short-term solution is toxic for me. I suspect that it is toxic for most people - but my ADHD makes it harder to deal with for me.
That said, everything that I do for me involves doing the opposite of what society pushes me towards. This makes for an interesting balancing act.
In reading your replies.. you've got it straight, from another long time ADHDer.
Tools are useful in as much as they help you control your attention.
The only ones I've found truly useful are ER4SRs. (In ear monitors, -35DB to the environment. I listen to music while I work, at ~70DB. If you do the math about the only thing I can hear is a fire alarm... and that's about right. :) )
Tools are useful even with medication. It's a myth that ADHD meds just fix you, they simply make things easier. And when that motivation is easier to overcome is when you use that to consciously make changes to your behaviour.
And in that case, the organisational tools are still helpful
I'm now very sad about Etymotics not sealing in my ear canals properly lol
Currently on the lookout for other IEMs with decent sound, I heard good things about Crinacle's 7Hz Dioko that have a flat-ish signature similar to Etymotics.
Can you really work while listening to music?
Having ADHD also, I can only perfectly focus if there is silence. Luckily I have over ear headphones that do noise cancellation when nothing is playing.
Mostly a lot of mind-body stuff to develop self-awareness, and adjusting my life, routines, and priorities to fit the needs that I find are not being met.
I can ramble on for ages about it. But it is also a highly personal journey - what works for me won't for the next person and vice versa. However KNOWING that it is important is huge.
He does fine until he starts spouting dogma about what all interventions must look like. That part is BS. BY FAR the most effective intervention that I've seen for ADHD in children is https://www.cdc.uci.edu/. It does none of what he claims you need to do. And it routinely takes people who can't perform in a normal classroom, and turns them into people who can.
I just watched a bit of the second video.
One problem with his model. One of the classic presentations of ADHD is hyperfocus. A state in which everything he says about ADHD is wrong.
The problem with both videos is that he is focused on control as accomplished through executive control. But there is a second path towards emotional control involving dealing with our emotions. And if you succeed in THAT, then your basic emotional makeup is supporting your self-control. Rather than imposing control through executive function, your executive function is being supported by your emotional makeup.
I've found this to be a far more effective way to do things. But it requires unlearning a whole lot about how we think that things should be done.
Yeah, about that. I fell into the same trap. Now I have someone who thinks her relative superpower makes her more mature and me more infantile even though she grew up dyslexic and still cannot distinguish to/too/two (and even though my income, while more highly variable than hers, is also far, far greater). Apparently it's fairly common for this to very negatively affect relationships. How in the heck did you manage that?? (assuming you did)
> The trick for me is that it is important that my life be organized around engaging with things that I want to do.
> Yes, yes, I know the idea of eliminating distractions so that I can focus. Honestly, that's crap that leads to disasters every time I try it. If I have positive motivations to do X, distractions are easy to set aside.
I don't have ADHD but this is something I struggle with/keep at the back of my head constantly. It took me a very long time to accept that (to put it bluntly) it's almost impossible for me to force myself to work on something I find useless. I wrote about this here: https://sonnet.io/posts/hummingbirds/ and here: https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/
Do you have any resources on the subject you could recommend?
my number one problem is motivation and number two problem is forgetfullness. The forgetfullness part is something I have been working on recently, using stuff like Alexa. I don't see any app ever solving that. I could use a pen and paper for this stuff and I am also seeking a therapist to talk to (had one before but had a negative experience)
> If I have positive motivations to do X, distractions are easy to set aside. If motivations are negative, I will be unable to resist creating distractions. And a straightjacket that prevents that leads to insanity.
First, a direct positive emotion - I'm aware of how much my doing routine chores helps my wife and family. And it is a trade, I'd much rather do the chores than the routine paperwork that my wife does instead!
Second, I use doing routine chores as meditation and thinking time. It does lead to doing the chore less efficiently - I might break off loading the dishwasher to pace, think, and jot down a note. But it is also personally productive time for me.
Not OP, but I give myself a little reward. Specifically, I "X" out the task on my daily task list. I take this so far as to add items I just completed to my list just so that I can mark them off.
It's stupid, but it works. At least for me. I think it comes down to 2 different types of positive reinforcement:
1. It feels good to mark a task done.
2. It feels good to look at a list of all of the things I did that day, even if they were the size of taking out the trash.
Automate as much as possible. I cannot live without a washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher inside my apartment. I tried once and I just had dirty clothes and dishes all the time. Beyond that I just pay for it! I love in an hoa so I don’t have to do yard work or trash, so cores are minimized as much as possible.
not OP, but what works surprisingly well for me, is doing chores when I am in the mood. That does sometimes mean cleaning out the dishwasher at 3AM, but at least it gets done sometimes instead of never.
Just keep an eye out for productive moods. Keep checking with yourself if you feel like doing chore X and if the answer is "yeah I guess" drop everything and do the chore.
This is the first post I've read about ADHD that makes me think that there are multi-dimensional qualities and that the general public treats ADHD as a binary yes/no. Very interesting and great self-awareness too.
Do you struggle more on days where you don't sleep enough? I find that on 9hrs of sleep, I'm able to manage my focus, but any less and it's a waste of a day.
Lack of sleep reduces executive control in everyone.
For me, that happens with chronic lack of sleep. Particularly when combined with stress. But in general I'm not too sensitive to sleep. I just start with a low baseline of executive control.
I believe this is very common to be honest. Issues with serotonin can cause anxiety, depression and ADHD, so it's common to have multiple.
I have all three and I'm on Elvanse. When I first started it sent my anxiety through the roof, but my clinician wanted me to stick with it for a few weeks to wait for me to level out, and we increased dosage a few times.
When I found a dose that worked for me, it's a bit of a trade-off. I am a bit jittery for the first hour or two of the day, but that's "jittery" anxiety rather "doom" anxiety. The sort of fidgeting in your chair kind of feeling but the rest of the day is fine. I find the trade off is worth it for me.
When i tried methylphenidate, it gave me the "sense of impending doom" sort of anxiety. That deep feeling in your chest that something terrible is imminent, I didn't like it at all and that's part of why I started antidepressants in the first place.
Two things that all types of ADD have in common are impaired emotional regulation and impulse control.
A combination with Anxiety/Depression meds and therapy might help. Some types only need an offlabel antidepressant like Bupropion for both impairments. All the best.
This is also hard because effective treatment of the ADHD with medication may negatively affect the anxiety or worsen it.
Stimulants especially in some people can increase anxiety and so on. And the worst would probably be sleeplessness as a aide effect of the stimulants that would affect the anxiety.
My son has anxiety. That's no fun. I'm glad I don't have that.
I'm sure a psychologist could load me down with some list of diagnoses if I was particularly curious. I haven't been curious, and I'm rather skeptical about the current state of psychology.
We are each individuals. I just know what works for me and those I care about.
That said, I would not discount that it works. Motivation only works for me if it is either overwhelming, or I'm in a good space. And that mostly means only when I'm in a good space.
Getting into that good space requires keeping my shoulds only things I want for a long enough time to condition my brain to the idea. This is hard to arrange, takes a good while to start working properly, and is easy to accidentally undo. It certainly isn't something I can just turn on.
Oh my god you’re describing all of my days every day. I’ve thought maybe I had ADHD or something but I’ve never read a more accurate depiction of my day to day.
Mild ADHD: You're more distractable and forgetful than most. You have techniques to get around this such as reminders, planners, assistants etc.
Moderate ADHD: You struggle with important task completion all the time. You've experienced consequences from it such as job loss or dropping out of college You may have depression or anxiety related to your ADHD
Severe ADHD: You're in prison because of a violent outburst caused by your emotional disregulation. You're homeless because you can't hold down a job or a relationship. You're dead because you crashed your car while distracted.
ADHD is not a true or false thing, which is what leads to the "everyone is a bit ADHD" myth.
Some people struggle in some situations, but with behavioural management can control it. Some people will find any excuse to not do what they're supposed to do, and have to fight the urge all day every day.
I personally had a bit of the latter, in that I often found myself just unexpectedly walking off mid work and finding myself across the building for no reason. It was just a physical urge to get up and do anything apart from work
The entire content of this website is six bullet points and three or four sentences. You really need to do a lot better than that. It looks like the cheapest, shadiest, slapped together "I hooked ChatGPT into google calendar" project, same as all the other "AI" projects coming out these days.
You've offered no compelling reason to use this, nor explained what it does or how it can help me except in the vaguest of terms.
It seems to be an effort to game you into being a more productive worker, and not actually helping you live with ADHD.
Additionally, while I very desperately want an AI personal assistant to help me manage my ADHD, there is absolutely no way in hell I'd ever use something that doesn't run on my hardware in my house that I physically control. Such an assistant would know literally everything about me, and that is not something anyone should ever trust to a company.
> It seems to be an effort to game you into being a more productive worker, and not actually helping you live with ADHD.
Where ADHD leads to problems being productive despite having the intelligence to do the job, and that jobs tend to, y'know, fire you if you're not productive, and you go homeless without money, which you get from having a job, isn't helping ADHD people be productive the same thing?
As far as your trust issues go, that's for each individual to decide. Some people are able to see past their cynicism and derive value from the products companies make.
> isn't helping ADHD people be productive the same thing?
Sure, if you believe the meaning of life is working as hard as you possibly can for no benefit until you die.
Real people in the real world have passions, desires, hobbies. Chores, relationships, responsibilities. We have lives. If you've ever met someone with severe ADHD, you'd see that it affects your life deeply and can greatly decrease your quality of life. And that's mostly because of the 'work til you drop' mindset.
> As far as your trust issues go, that's for each individual to decide.
Trusting companies who have over and over done everything they possibly can to turn your trust into money is not really a sane or logical stance to take. Giving enormous detail about your personal life, or confidential work data to a company that blatantly does not respect you or your privacy is not wise.
So to sum up, you're mansplaining my own disability to me and gaslighting me about not trusting openai.
Don't stop now, my 'shitty dudebro' bingo card is nearly full
> As far as your trust issues go, that's for each individual to decide. Some people are able to see past their cynicism and derive value from the products companies make.
Your attempt at framing consumer protection as trust issues undermine the emotional scope of being a human being. You should seriously evaluate why someone who asks for the right to privacy is being framed in your mind as having a “trust issue.”
AI, in its current iteration as a centralized technology, will encourage future rent-seeking by incumbents and impact those dependent on it. Open access to models and locally running offline AI technology will be critical to its long-term success.
In the meantime highly productive people from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Feynman appear to have had ADHD. Do you really think that this app would have made a positive difference in their lives?
You only have to look as far as big social media to see proof of the damage that corporate motives can cause on the mental health of average internetizens.
I'm quite curious about this sentiment because I've seen it more than a few times here on Hackernews.
I have ADHD and have been very successful in my work life so far. I'm on a prescription medication for when my focus is necessary but that seems to be either dismissed or heavily frowned upon here.
Is there a reason why the answer to ADHD seems to be "use AI to do your work" rather than "use the proven medications to allow you to focus"? It just seems strange to me.
And some companies are able to make products that people actually want to use, and that don't have properties that put off their prospective customers.
When you want my money, and I don't want to give it to you, that's an "issue", but more for you than me.
Yeah I tend to agree, my ADHD is an existential problem only because I have a family to support and it tends to disrupt the flow of income. You know, by getting me to change careers like four times before age 40…
First of all, I'm glad people are trying to come up with assistive technologies for ADHD. I applaud anyone who actually makes something and puts it out there.
That said, a lot of "ADHD apps" are todo lists and planning apps. ADHD isn't a disorder of planning, it's a disorder of doing. I can make realistic, specific, achievable plans as well as anyone else, but when it comes to doing the work it often just doesn't happen. Literally yesterday I lost a freelance client purely due to my own procrastination. I had a sensible plan and didn't follow it.
I don't want to just slam this app or other existing apps, so in an effort to be constructive here are some spaces that I think could be explored further to help people with ADHD:
* Smart speakers. I use them heavily and they are a great distraction free computing device. "Fire and forget" reminders are great. I have a smart speaker in every room and can set a reminder to do something in 30 minutes time without having to move, find a pen, pick up a phone or distract myself in any way.
* Emotional regulation. ADHD means you are on a rollercoaster of emotions that you can't regulate well. There are techniques for controlling them but when you are blinded with rage or bursting into tears you don't remember. Perhaps a device could constantly asses your emotional state and remind you of regulation techniques right when you need them.
* Anything centered around positivity and forgiveness. An app that makes past successes visible without minimizing the impact of the disorder would be great.
As a person with ADHD I hate these fancy high tech
super slick promo products / sites.
They all appear to made by people who are do not have ADHD
(might be wrong)
but they figure they know what such people need.
And that is yet another calendar / task list with some spices.
they can use to go after grants / stipends etc.
Aside from a privacy nightmare.
Yeah I am giving a presentation to the board about
this new confidential product and i dont know how
to structure it
> Tell me all about this new product and how it will work.
> Can you tell me the name of the company and its stock ticker?
They dont even say what the price is.
Or how they monetize it.
Or the source code
Or ...
I think the best way to help is to fund basic research,
"all you need to do is focus" is what I read when I see an "ADHD help" tool/article/lifestyle/pleasegiveusmoneyscheme about 90% of the time.
not just that it's made by people that don't have adhd, but people that haven't even read the modern science literature on the treatment and condition itself.
> think the best way to help is to fund basic research
And to lobby your politicians to take controls and schedules off the stimulant medications used to treat ADHD. Stop voting for candidates without sensible drug policies.
I am not sure about that.
It depends how far you want to take it.
I dont think ADHD medication should be OTC.
An experienced psychiatrist should always prescribe it.
There are issues surrounding that in the US,
given price.
In Norway my meds are free.
Who could think that making you open the browser is a good idea to help people concentrate. They took the "release as soon as possible too seriously". A Mental Health App has to be created responsibly. This is unacceptable. It's Buggy and has GPT-3.5, We don't need a dumb assistant that causes more confusion. It started telling me that I have a meeting I don't, and a couple of other hallucinations. Made me lose time, and now I am angry! I will go back to "h.m.m" (a CLI mind map). If you don't have the money or talent to make the previous experiments properly before releasing, at least don't advertise it claiming that you help people who suffer from something.
While I empathize that companies have to choose a release pathway that limits cost, I will not be a customer of a product whose release pathway is just a Chrome plugin. From where I'm sitting, that's less cost limiting and more customer limiting.
I'm in the middle of some AI startup telling me my clinicians don't need to do their own notes anymore if I pay $1000 a month for a Chrome plugin that records the session and runs it through some unnamed, unknown, undetailed LLM they run in Google Cloud, and they're acting like I'm stupid for having issues with it.
It's totally unacceptable. These people are clearly only interested in making profits, and I would like to believe that they will hardly make any. I want to take them down!
I've been actively trying to find ways to offload tasks to software assistants -- I've slowly been getting a bit more comfortable using siri.
My first impression is that the results tracking will just be a report of failures and wind up causing disinterest in the application as a whole.
I also am concerned that the AI may wind up placing demands on me that I may think I want in one moment, but don't wind up engaging with...leaving a bunch of stuff piling up.
The example of the presentation just sort of leaves it at "About the presentation ...", at which point it seems like the user is expected to ...tell the ai about the presentation. So I haven't really been shown how it solves any problem that I have.
Also remember that AIs are biased on the training set and you're targeting a minority of a population. It's probably not going to know "how" to speak to me, what tones actually work, etc.
I hope that all amounts to useful feedback -- I do really want an effective product to offload stuff to -- but if it's not effective, it has negative value in my life.
I personally want something at the level of Samantha from Her for managing my life. When I think about the data inputs needed to have an AI that effective, it's made me increasingly aware at how much I lack from tools like Google Tasks and reminders etc. for keeping track of all the things I need to do.
It's easy to have them slip off the list and be forgotten about, or not be able to do small things to move them ahead and have that progress reflected in the task. But I desperately want this.
I desperately want this. But yes, the amount of data required is insane. Just off the top of my head:
- browser history
- SMS and call transcriptions
- calendar
- passive audio stream from my phone
- interactions on social media
- my diary
- my work, or at least commit messages
It's a lot, and you'd need a pretty clever model in the middle of it to make sense of.
I don't know much about AI today, but I get the sense that you could string together a bunch of different systems today to achieve this, but no one has done it yet.
Also, if the dataset is exposed, it'd be an unthinkable privacy breach. Something like this has to run on dedicated hardware that you own. Feeding every intimate detail of your entire life into the cloud should be completely untenable.
I'm seriously impressed by the level of integration across the Apple ecosystem. If they can find a way to hook AI into every corner of it, you might be able to approach the point where you get your wish.
The apparent stagnancy of Siri might be just that.
Can you explain how this is specialized for the needs of people with ADHD? How does it differ from a "general purpose" AI bot like ChatGPT? To me it looks like a spin for marketing.
Readit News
My first response to this is that it solves problems that I don't have, and ignores the ones I do have.
Organizing my day on paper is trivial. I'm also married to someone with a good partnership, and we offload different types of tasks to each other. She might enjoy having software assistants to be more productive, but I don't need that. I have her.
The trick for me is that it is important that my life be organized around engaging with things that I want to do. And thereby having my wants reinforce executive control so that I can do what I think that I should. This involves a lot of managing of my emotional state, and a lot of REJECTING of outside demands by the world that I conform to how the world wants me to be. I see nothing about this app that helps me do either thing.
Yes, yes, I know the idea of eliminating distractions so that I can focus. Honestly, that's crap that leads to disasters every time I try it. If I have positive motivations to do X, distractions are easy to set aside. If motivations are negative, I will be unable to resist creating distractions. And a straightjacket that prevents that leads to insanity.
Which returns me to my point. The key, for me, in handling ADHD is emotional tools to find positive motivations, and social tools to resist the world attempting to load me with tasks through negative motivations.
This is exactly what I suspect of virtually any kind of app, software, platform, etc. I’m advertised as intended to help me with ADHD. ADHD is expresses itself in such a broad variety of ways. I just don’t trust that any kind of app is actually so tuned into my experience of ADHD that it could actually be helpful.
I hesitate to say this: but, it’s hard hard not to feel offended at times by the ways in which ADHD appears to be radically oversimplified to fit into a narrow product specification and pitched to people who might really need help.
At least this seems to be free to use. I really hate when solutions like this cost money and advertise specifically for ADHD. Because, being impulsive, of course I sign up for the thing, use it for maybe a couple days, then stop using it, but forget to unsubscribe for like 5 months, wasting a bunch of money...
So I think these services always take the wrong approach. Instead of promising to make the ADHD disappear or take a disciplined all-or-nothing blocking approach, they need to consider the fact that people with ADHD are aware that it's a thing they have to life with and generally try to optimize their lives to best cope with it.
So any such company should probably take on whatever tasks one has to do in life to survive in general and try to make all of that more accessible and disability-friendly to be of most help.
And we still live in a world with a lot of stigma, the ideas that adult ADHD isn't a thing or that medication is outright bad or literally cheating in life, or that ADHD doesn't exist or is overdiagnosed. There's A LOT to tackle in this lane.
I've been through a degree, a masters and years of work using every trick in the book to force myself to work and not get distracted. I have super detailed plans, all of my work is accountable, I write down everything I have to do. It goes on and on how I micro-manage my day just to force myself to work or do my tasks.
Then I got an ADHD diagnosis, started medication and my life changed. Suddenly I can just sit down and get to work instead of fighting myself to put the phone down and close reddit. I don't get up and wander off unexpectedly, I don't feel a physical urge to walk off out of my seat and in my 30s I realised that's what normal is. I don't put off every little 5 minute task, I just do them without a second thought.
Sure, I can survive without the meds, but life is so much easier not having to fight against myself for every single damn task.
I also take antidpressants and I view them in the same way. The tablets don't "cure" me, but they clear my head enough so that I can make the conscious decision to improve my behaviour.
I found much later in life that the only things that consistently motivated me were a looming deadline, or severe consequences to failure. The lone exception was computer puzzles, by which I mean things like “how do I get this obscure Chinese sound card running in Gentoo,” or “how does a file actually get written to a drive? oh look blkparse…”
About a year ago, I got an ADHD diagnosis for primarily inattentive type, and my life changed. There have been some tweaks here and there to medication and dosage, but the amount of focus I can now devote to tasks which previously would be monstrously difficult - like writing Jira stories - is amazing.
That's the hallmark of applying technology for technology's sake, which is a lot of what engineers and tech entrepreneurs do nowadays. Especially for technologies that are getting a lot of hype. AI is blockchain all over again, a lot of "let me try to shoehorn this sexy tech where it doesn't really belong."
Motivation has been my biggest A-Ha with ADHD and trying my absolute best to align what I do with what I want to do otherwise I am setting myself up for failure and others for disappointment with me.
People tend to think of motivation as some innate property of your person. But it's actually an emotional response to inputs.
Guanfacine is approved to treat ADHD in the United States and several other countries.
Technically, extended-release Guanfacine is approved because that's what was used in the trials. The brand name is Intuniv and the generic is Guanfacine ER.
The generic guanfacine (non-ER) can also be used, though technically off label. The only difference is that it must be dosed twice a day instead of once a day and the absorption is different so you can't do a 1:1 translation of your dose to the ER.
Now that Guanfacine ER is generic and cheap, you might want to consider it for once daily dosing.
The non-stimulant medications are very good, but require some patience to get started with. Too many people give up in the first week or month because the side effects haven't settled yet. Straterra (Atomoxetine) is another one that can take 1-2 months for good efficacy. Clinical trials show the positive effects continue to build over the course of a year. Surprisingly, Atomoxetine has a lower relapse rate after discontinuation too, suggesting it might be making some long-term positive changes to the brain. This is a nice contrast to stimulants, where the patient becomes essentially dependent on the medication and can go through a protracted rebound if they ever have to discontinue.
Can you elaborate which ADHD symptoms it has helped the most? I'm currently not taking any meds but I can't focus or concentrate to save my life which makes a demanding IT job difficult at times.
My problems are loss of appetite, trouble sleeping (leading to sleep deprivation that itself causes loss of executive control), and irritability. This is in addition to the fact that I have high blood pressure, and would rather not have to increase the cocktail of medications that I'm taking for that.
This needs more context, because unlike stimulants, you can't quit guanfacine instantly or you'll feel pretty ill. You have to taper off it for a week or two.
Also, you can't drink on it (enjoyably) and it made me feel tired and emotional.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0425269973
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWnJ4wjVu9k
> This involves a lot of managing of my emotional state, and a lot of REJECTING of outside demands by the world that I conform to how the world wants me to be.
A hallmark of ADHD is emotional dysregulation and impulsivity, so what exactly does rejecting "outside demands" look like? How exactly are you managing emotional state if not with medication? Ironically the only way I've managed my emotional state off medication is by conforming to outside demands and ignoring my individual desires/motivations as much as possible.
Trying to do things because someone is pushing me to do them will result in my becoming resentful, and losing my ability to get into an effective state of flow. But enough places in tech provide enough flexibility that I've been able to find places where I can be productive. And, in a virtuous cycle, productivity can make all sorts of oddities acceptable in an employee.
As for emotional dysregulation, let me address that. ADHD is caused by weak executive function. People with ADHD are slow to realize that we SHOULD do X, and the SHOULD is fairly weak. Therefore it becomes hard to resist emotions telling us we want to do Y instead.
I have two tools to address that.
The first is that at a purely emotional level, I strive to be fairly balanced. I work to address things that cause me negative emotions, like resentment, so that I don't have negative emotions to fight against.
The second is that I attach my "shoulds" to my understanding of what I actually want and care about. As a result the idea "I should X" is reinforced by a DESIRE to do X. And this emotional reinforcement makes it easy to do it.
Ironically, it is always easier to motivate myself in the short term with negative emotions. But the effect of doing so is a breakdown of the positive feedback loop that I'm using to maintain myself. Thus forcing myself only works for a limited time, and then falls apart. And so that short-term solution is toxic for me. I suspect that it is toxic for most people - but my ADHD makes it harder to deal with for me.
That said, everything that I do for me involves doing the opposite of what society pushes me towards. This makes for an interesting balancing act.
Tools are useful in as much as they help you control your attention.
The only ones I've found truly useful are ER4SRs. (In ear monitors, -35DB to the environment. I listen to music while I work, at ~70DB. If you do the math about the only thing I can hear is a fire alarm... and that's about right. :) )
And in that case, the organisational tools are still helpful
I can ramble on for ages about it. But it is also a highly personal journey - what works for me won't for the next person and vice versa. However KNOWING that it is important is huge.
"This is how you treat ADHD based off science, Dr Russell Barkley part of 2012 Burnett Lecture" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tpB-B8BXk0
Edit: here's a newer one by the same speaker "ADHD as Motivation Deficit Disorder" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3RJU6838c
He does fine until he starts spouting dogma about what all interventions must look like. That part is BS. BY FAR the most effective intervention that I've seen for ADHD in children is https://www.cdc.uci.edu/. It does none of what he claims you need to do. And it routinely takes people who can't perform in a normal classroom, and turns them into people who can.
I just watched a bit of the second video.
One problem with his model. One of the classic presentations of ADHD is hyperfocus. A state in which everything he says about ADHD is wrong.
The problem with both videos is that he is focused on control as accomplished through executive control. But there is a second path towards emotional control involving dealing with our emotions. And if you succeed in THAT, then your basic emotional makeup is supporting your self-control. Rather than imposing control through executive function, your executive function is being supported by your emotional makeup.
I've found this to be a far more effective way to do things. But it requires unlearning a whole lot about how we think that things should be done.
Yeah, about that. I fell into the same trap. Now I have someone who thinks her relative superpower makes her more mature and me more infantile even though she grew up dyslexic and still cannot distinguish to/too/two (and even though my income, while more highly variable than hers, is also far, far greater). Apparently it's fairly common for this to very negatively affect relationships. How in the heck did you manage that?? (assuming you did)
How do actually do it will vary widely from couple to couple. The book The 5 Love Languages may help. It was one of many that helped me.
> Yes, yes, I know the idea of eliminating distractions so that I can focus. Honestly, that's crap that leads to disasters every time I try it. If I have positive motivations to do X, distractions are easy to set aside.
I don't have ADHD but this is something I struggle with/keep at the back of my head constantly. It took me a very long time to accept that (to put it bluntly) it's almost impossible for me to force myself to work on something I find useless. I wrote about this here: https://sonnet.io/posts/hummingbirds/ and here: https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/
Do you have any resources on the subject you could recommend?
How do you deal with chores?
Second, I use doing routine chores as meditation and thinking time. It does lead to doing the chore less efficiently - I might break off loading the dishwasher to pace, think, and jot down a note. But it is also personally productive time for me.
It's stupid, but it works. At least for me. I think it comes down to 2 different types of positive reinforcement:
1. It feels good to mark a task done. 2. It feels good to look at a list of all of the things I did that day, even if they were the size of taking out the trash.
Just keep an eye out for productive moods. Keep checking with yourself if you feel like doing chore X and if the answer is "yeah I guess" drop everything and do the chore.
For me, that happens with chronic lack of sleep. Particularly when combined with stress. But in general I'm not too sensitive to sleep. I just start with a low baseline of executive control.
I have all three and I'm on Elvanse. When I first started it sent my anxiety through the roof, but my clinician wanted me to stick with it for a few weeks to wait for me to level out, and we increased dosage a few times.
When I found a dose that worked for me, it's a bit of a trade-off. I am a bit jittery for the first hour or two of the day, but that's "jittery" anxiety rather "doom" anxiety. The sort of fidgeting in your chair kind of feeling but the rest of the day is fine. I find the trade off is worth it for me.
When i tried methylphenidate, it gave me the "sense of impending doom" sort of anxiety. That deep feeling in your chest that something terrible is imminent, I didn't like it at all and that's part of why I started antidepressants in the first place.
A combination with Anxiety/Depression meds and therapy might help. Some types only need an offlabel antidepressant like Bupropion for both impairments. All the best.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0425269973
I'm sure a psychologist could load me down with some list of diagnoses if I was particularly curious. I haven't been curious, and I'm rather skeptical about the current state of psychology.
I have high motivation/curiosity and struggle hard to do things even if I know like and enjoy them.
Medication helps tremendously with this and I reduced it for a few years and still have behavior patterns I learned on medication
That said, I would not discount that it works. Motivation only works for me if it is either overwhelming, or I'm in a good space. And that mostly means only when I'm in a good space.
Getting into that good space requires keeping my shoulds only things I want for a long enough time to condition my brain to the idea. This is hard to arrange, takes a good while to start working properly, and is easy to accidentally undo. It certainly isn't something I can just turn on.
I will say that it isn't easy. But the flexibility that can come with being a programmer really helps.
Good for you. Not everyone is that lucky though.
I have a hard time understanding what this means
Mild ADHD: You're more distractable and forgetful than most. You have techniques to get around this such as reminders, planners, assistants etc.
Moderate ADHD: You struggle with important task completion all the time. You've experienced consequences from it such as job loss or dropping out of college You may have depression or anxiety related to your ADHD
Severe ADHD: You're in prison because of a violent outburst caused by your emotional disregulation. You're homeless because you can't hold down a job or a relationship. You're dead because you crashed your car while distracted.
Many things are measured on a scale that goes from mild, to moderate, to moderately severe, to severe.
Some people struggle in some situations, but with behavioural management can control it. Some people will find any excuse to not do what they're supposed to do, and have to fight the urge all day every day.
I personally had a bit of the latter, in that I often found myself just unexpectedly walking off mid work and finding myself across the building for no reason. It was just a physical urge to get up and do anything apart from work
You've offered no compelling reason to use this, nor explained what it does or how it can help me except in the vaguest of terms.
It seems to be an effort to game you into being a more productive worker, and not actually helping you live with ADHD.
Additionally, while I very desperately want an AI personal assistant to help me manage my ADHD, there is absolutely no way in hell I'd ever use something that doesn't run on my hardware in my house that I physically control. Such an assistant would know literally everything about me, and that is not something anyone should ever trust to a company.
Where ADHD leads to problems being productive despite having the intelligence to do the job, and that jobs tend to, y'know, fire you if you're not productive, and you go homeless without money, which you get from having a job, isn't helping ADHD people be productive the same thing?
As far as your trust issues go, that's for each individual to decide. Some people are able to see past their cynicism and derive value from the products companies make.
Sure, if you believe the meaning of life is working as hard as you possibly can for no benefit until you die.
Real people in the real world have passions, desires, hobbies. Chores, relationships, responsibilities. We have lives. If you've ever met someone with severe ADHD, you'd see that it affects your life deeply and can greatly decrease your quality of life. And that's mostly because of the 'work til you drop' mindset.
> As far as your trust issues go, that's for each individual to decide.
Trusting companies who have over and over done everything they possibly can to turn your trust into money is not really a sane or logical stance to take. Giving enormous detail about your personal life, or confidential work data to a company that blatantly does not respect you or your privacy is not wise.
So to sum up, you're mansplaining my own disability to me and gaslighting me about not trusting openai.
Don't stop now, my 'shitty dudebro' bingo card is nearly full
Your attempt at framing consumer protection as trust issues undermine the emotional scope of being a human being. You should seriously evaluate why someone who asks for the right to privacy is being framed in your mind as having a “trust issue.”
AI, in its current iteration as a centralized technology, will encourage future rent-seeking by incumbents and impact those dependent on it. Open access to models and locally running offline AI technology will be critical to its long-term success.
In the meantime highly productive people from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Feynman appear to have had ADHD. Do you really think that this app would have made a positive difference in their lives?
I have ADHD and have been very successful in my work life so far. I'm on a prescription medication for when my focus is necessary but that seems to be either dismissed or heavily frowned upon here.
Is there a reason why the answer to ADHD seems to be "use AI to do your work" rather than "use the proven medications to allow you to focus"? It just seems strange to me.
When you want my money, and I don't want to give it to you, that's an "issue", but more for you than me.
Dead Comment
That said, a lot of "ADHD apps" are todo lists and planning apps. ADHD isn't a disorder of planning, it's a disorder of doing. I can make realistic, specific, achievable plans as well as anyone else, but when it comes to doing the work it often just doesn't happen. Literally yesterday I lost a freelance client purely due to my own procrastination. I had a sensible plan and didn't follow it.
I don't want to just slam this app or other existing apps, so in an effort to be constructive here are some spaces that I think could be explored further to help people with ADHD:
* Smart speakers. I use them heavily and they are a great distraction free computing device. "Fire and forget" reminders are great. I have a smart speaker in every room and can set a reminder to do something in 30 minutes time without having to move, find a pen, pick up a phone or distract myself in any way.
* Emotional regulation. ADHD means you are on a rollercoaster of emotions that you can't regulate well. There are techniques for controlling them but when you are blinded with rage or bursting into tears you don't remember. Perhaps a device could constantly asses your emotional state and remind you of regulation techniques right when you need them.
* Anything centered around positivity and forgiveness. An app that makes past successes visible without minimizing the impact of the disorder would be great.
Aside from a privacy nightmare. Yeah I am giving a presentation to the board about this new confidential product and i dont know how to structure it
> Tell me all about this new product and how it will work. > Can you tell me the name of the company and its stock ticker?
They dont even say what the price is. Or how they monetize it. Or the source code Or ...
I think the best way to help is to fund basic research,
not just that it's made by people that don't have adhd, but people that haven't even read the modern science literature on the treatment and condition itself.
it's frustrating!
ATTENTION is all you need?
And to lobby your politicians to take controls and schedules off the stimulant medications used to treat ADHD. Stop voting for candidates without sensible drug policies.
There are issues surrounding that in the US, given price. In Norway my meds are free.
https://www.rev.com/blog/rev-spotlight/announcing-rev-ai-hip...
My first impression is that the results tracking will just be a report of failures and wind up causing disinterest in the application as a whole.
I also am concerned that the AI may wind up placing demands on me that I may think I want in one moment, but don't wind up engaging with...leaving a bunch of stuff piling up.
The example of the presentation just sort of leaves it at "About the presentation ...", at which point it seems like the user is expected to ...tell the ai about the presentation. So I haven't really been shown how it solves any problem that I have.
Also remember that AIs are biased on the training set and you're targeting a minority of a population. It's probably not going to know "how" to speak to me, what tones actually work, etc.
I hope that all amounts to useful feedback -- I do really want an effective product to offload stuff to -- but if it's not effective, it has negative value in my life.
It's easy to have them slip off the list and be forgotten about, or not be able to do small things to move them ahead and have that progress reflected in the task. But I desperately want this.
It's a lot, and you'd need a pretty clever model in the middle of it to make sense of.
I don't know much about AI today, but I get the sense that you could string together a bunch of different systems today to achieve this, but no one has done it yet.
Also, if the dataset is exposed, it'd be an unthinkable privacy breach. Something like this has to run on dedicated hardware that you own. Feeding every intimate detail of your entire life into the cloud should be completely untenable.
The apparent stagnancy of Siri might be just that.