I don’t know if I have ADHD, but sometimes I think so. I hate doing tasks that do not interest me, and I can go a long ways in trying to get of things that don’t interest me. I also daydream a lot. Especially when people are talking.
If I do have ADHD, one thing I noticed is how much I like doing tasks that feel like jigsaw puzzles. From total chaos to a known solution, one baby step at a time.
When I was younger I used to think I was above jigsaw puzzles (I thought I was above a lot of things). One day on vacation, the place we stayed at had jigsaw puzzles available. And I found myself really liking it. But I wasn’t sure why. After doing a few more of them over the years, and thinking about why I liked it, I realize it’s my kind of workflow. I enjoy projects that are disorganized in the beginning. But not just disorganized, but completely chaotic and seemingly impossible. With jigsaw puzzles, the first thing you do is flip all the pieces over, one by one. The journey of a thousand miles has begun. Still, it looks overwhelming. And it will be a long road. But you need to organize. Then you move pieces together and group them by color. When you find an edge piece, you set it aside. Once you have all the edge pieces, the boundary comes together in short order. Yet, still chaos. And the next piece is probably one of the hardest. There’s so many to pick from. But eventually you find a match and piece it together. And suddenly the pool of available pieces is reduced by one. The next piece will be easier, but only slightly at first. As you progress though, it gets easier and easier, until a known solution.
I can stay focused on this kind of task all day long. I don’t know why.
It’s not just jigsaw puzzles though. Any kind of project that models this kind of workflow. It’s critical though that a solution is known in the project. For example, I cannot find a needle in haystack if the needle may or may not be there. If there’s a chance it is not there, then I don’t have what it takes to do at individual step. If the end goal is indeterminate, my my brain isn’t going to let me focus. It just won’t work, and back to spacing out I go. I have better things to think about.
Knots are another thing I like to do work on. A lot of people are instantly flustered at the thought of untangling a mess of cables or strings. Not me, this is bliss. Flow. I hit that shit like Buddhist monk.
