In adult-diagnosed ADHD cases, we often find ourselves discovering cleverly invented milestones and achievements or even convenient self deceptions that produce dopamine when it would naturally be a long way away. Speaking for myself, I allow myself personal congratulations and merits for utterly insignificant and pointless details for any task that feels “too big” or “too daunting” to make them achievable for my brain. I can take several hours to get my laundry going, a couple minutes work in all, and I allow myself to celebrate getting the dirty laundry into a basket, then another getting it into the laundry room. Usually by this point following through is automatic and doesn’t require more workarounds.
But ultimately the concept is the same. If the reward feels far away, and far away is demotivating, giving yourself rewards along the way opens pathways to keep going when it doesn’t feel feasible otherwise.
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Moreover, you can't actually measure whether it's dopamine, you're simply hypothesizing that it is. And while I'm inclined to believe that dopamine would be involved, you don't strictly know. Saying neuro-terms like "dopamine" may make things sound more real or true, but they aren't more real or more true as you're not measuring your brain.
In that sense neuroscience feels a bit similar to religion (just a bit, from my agnostic perspective). Yes, you use scientific concepts, but since nothing is measured, you as an interested person in neuroscience have no clue what is actually happening in your brain. But it does sound more compelling! Not needing to measure anything while using theories that sound highly convincing to a certain group with certain ideals is how most religion feels like to me (not all though, I can definitely appreciate certain theological discourses of all religions, and I also appreciate religions that don't have a strong emphasis on gods, for example).
So on HN I try to limit my neural babble as much as possible when I talk about my own experiences as my cortisol levels are spiking too much -- ;-) -- when I'm reading neuro-explained anecdotes. I hope that HN'ers see my point or feel that there are convincing counterarguments to this that might make for an interesting discussion.
Obviously I’m not in any way qualified to say one way or the other, but if things like this meaningfully impede your life I’d recommend reading about adult ADHD, see if things feel like they have explanations you’ve never known you needed... and if you do, seek diagnosis.
For my experience when I finally had enough confidence that there was really something to it, I had to read a lot of non-diagnostic literature to really understand how to navigate that process. The DSM criteria are almost entirely designed around diagnosing children, and almost entirely around misbehavior. Adults will not relate to most behavior descriptions and will have developed so many coping alternatives that the answers often form as “well, no, but here is how I’ve learned to compensate”.
Edit: I’d be remiss not to credit the actual human on the internet who gave me the most insight into this and ultimately prompted me to seek diagnosis. For anyone looking for someone who speaks extensively and knowledgeably about adult ADHD, I highly recommend following Erynn Brook on twitter.
I think that's also why I've been really happy being part of team that does agile. The ticket swim lane thing is surprisingly motivating.
There's a typo near the end of the post, which made me smile - my first thought was that it was left in intentionally. I recommend following the author's lead. Like any treatment, it's no panacea, but by god was it liberating, and I'm not entirely disabled by perfectionism these days :)
As in: it's almost like those jokes about interview answers: "What's your biggest weakness" / "I work too much".
It it helps people to cope and build some self-confidence then, maybe, it's the mistake that is net-positive. Sort-of like the (apocryphal) story that Columbus made a mistake and believed India to be much closer to Europe, and wouldn't have attempted to cross the Atlantic otherwise.
But my default position would be that any such delusional thought patterns tend to hurt. This, specifically, also has the ugly implication that anybody getting stuff done is sloppy and/or otherwise not at the genius level it takes to never do anything right.
(Spoken as someone who should be working instead of arguing on HN)
Thinking through it and telling you that its not worth it because x makes it better to fit my worldview. But it just might not be relevant at all this part of thinking.
For example: I do like learning but i was sitting in school (with >20) and understood the math teacher, after that we should do exercises. I was blocked. Couldn't do it. I was mentally aware of this block. I started talking ritalin. The block was gone.
I realize this block more often and think more about this blockage than calling it perfectionism or realism.
Another example: I started studing after that and realized quite soon that its fun to read through it and learn things and it feels totally broken how much time you have to invest of sometimes finding good explanation for things. And more complex it got, the chance that i started to forget those things after the exam were high. Knowing how aes works step by step vs. having a rough idea. I always can read quickly through wikipedia to remember enough about aes. I wouldn't needed to study for this.
And the balance was very weird. There were clearly lectures which i was able to do by reading and learning for a week before the exam (i already worked professionally at that time so i had experience) which provided very small peaces of insight vs. math lectures which were interesting to hear, frankly useless to learn due to me never needing it in the future and my studies not getting deep enough so those lectures would have mattered.
What matters is bringing home money which means in the first instance a job is critical. I would love to see who i would become and what i would do and how a live would look like if i wouldn't need to work and still have enough resources available. Or if my job would actually matter.
A Freudian slip?
Perfectionism is a deeper curse than procrastination. Procrastination can just be laziness, but like Alcoholism, if you cannot stop it, then you have a problem, and then it could be perfectionism.
Perfectionism is not perfection, like Socialism is not social.
It also doesn't help that we are now so much more connected.
I don't write software for one person. I often write it for Teams or customers and im efficient when i can automate things.
I do see this every day when i see people or processies and i think very often how inefficient it is.
Concept of good old mail: "useless". Takes ages, a human being has to sort it and has to bring it to you. Or a lot of jobs like all things a computer could do better and faster if we removed humans inbetween and added trust.
My mind tries to analyse things on a meta level which also leads to thoughts of relevance. I'm probably a nihilist for a reason.
My Mantras for the last few years are about the 'normal' things. Like trying out a new recipe .
And at the end of the day, i realize more and more that simple logic isn't working and my influence is very small; Now instead of trying to change something i can't change on a meta level, my goal now is to get away from this all.
I'm wandering through a mist of clarity as everyone else to arrive at the same end: death.
Not only is it a neat, simple model to play around with, but the tone of the article made me smile.
I need more friends like this author!
Thank you for taking the (excessive) amount of time to write this and overcoming the urge to polish out all the "imperfections".
I'll now have that nitpicky attitude in check and remind myself that not completely perfect merge/pull requests are still work that my clients can see, and the feedback loop within them when they're not perfect from the get go doesn't necessarily have a downside, and can in fact improve communication and the flow of work. After all, a request is by definition not necessarily the work completed, but literally a request for feedback, and possibly iterating on the work already done.
I can even use a trick to mentally tell myself it doesn't have to be perfect: I can start work everyday with the expectation that, at the end, I only need to create or update a draft merge/pull request. That will get me even more easily into the mindset that I'm working to ask for feedback, not to deliver the final piece. Who knows, maybe by the end of the day the work will be good enough for a finished request, so it's a win-win situation.
And that's just one idea, that I need to put in action. I'll see how it goes.
The path is half the battle. Furthermore, getting a [DRAFT] out and interacting with the team has a catalytic effect.
Ain't about me. I'm singular. The team is plural. I'm at my location on the curve, with some leading me, some lagging.
As a contractor, my good work is for the sake of good work, and the knowledge it brings. That immaculately polished cannonball of a deliverable? Going under a bus.
Read Ecclesiastes.
Enjoying the process, while fully embracing this realization, is key.
Something like “it achieves exactly what it sets out to do?”
Given your definition of perfection and why math fits it, is there anything else that fits the definition?
Instead, it's the best human mind can muster.
