I discovered something important this past week while I was out camping in the woods. I had no Internet and no network connectivity. What I did have was a folder full of math papers and a notebook full of story ideas, and while Omaha and I did spend a lot of time either hiking, cooking, swimming, or playing card games, I also spent a lot of time just reading. Mostly trashy stuff, but reading.
It’s also important to know, perhaps, that I didn’t take any of my ADHD meds with me on this trip. I didn’t think I’d need them. And you know what?
I didn’t.
I’m starting to think that the kind ADHD described by normal people, that is, the ADHD which impacts the witnesses and not the person with the condition is, like depression, triggered by the environment in which we live. That its utility, in moments of hyperfocus and manic productivity, is swamped and broken by the regimentation of modern schooling and the conflicting multifaceted demands of office work.
I came up with four great story plots. I also grokked something deep and important about the fundamental theory of computation, something that links the Kleene Algebra to everything from regular expressions (where they’re most commonly used) to the basic descriptions of what a programming language is. (I could hyperfocus geekily on this right now, but I’ve learned not to.)
Omaha and I agreed not to discuss the world while we were out. It was impossible to keep that promise completely; sometimes, while driving from the campsite to an active trailhead we’d pass through a zone with radio and snatches of what was going on in the world would filter into my imagination. I don’t know about Omaha, she’s the event-driven, extrovert type; but I learned just how long it takes to get my imagination back into the groove of whatever it was I wanted most to think about.
The answer, sometimes, was all day. I’d have to go read something ridiculous (I read a lot of Lovecraft) just to flush all the world’s anxieties back out of my head.
I’m currently riding high on a week of being well-rested as well as alcohol and drug (even prescription drug) free, at least for the cognitive drugs. (I still took my statin and allergy meds, duh.) I gave my future self a list of to-dos that, so far, future self has agreed are sensible and workable. Some are more challenging than others, and today has been little more than “get re-aligned with all projects, both professional and personal, after being off-line for 9 days,” so we’ll see how far I get on any of them for realz of course.
This is a thing I have to remember, this is the thing all those “do your big thing first thing in the morning before anything else” stories are about: you do your best work when your mind is uncluttered, and the one thing the black slab in your pocket and the email queue on your desk want to do, the one thing they want, is to grab your attention for their purposes not yours, and if you have any intellectual life at all, there are a lot of processes out there vying for your attention.
They create the very clutter they’re trying to break through and, in the process, they deny you your rightful control over your own attention.
It’s also important to know, perhaps, that I didn’t take any of my ADHD meds with me on this trip. I didn’t think I’d need them. And you know what?
I didn’t.
I’m starting to think that the kind ADHD described by normal people, that is, the ADHD which impacts the witnesses and not the person with the condition is, like depression, triggered by the environment in which we live. That its utility, in moments of hyperfocus and manic productivity, is swamped and broken by the regimentation of modern schooling and the conflicting multifaceted demands of office work.
I came up with four great story plots. I also grokked something deep and important about the fundamental theory of computation, something that links the Kleene Algebra to everything from regular expressions (where they’re most commonly used) to the basic descriptions of what a programming language is. (I could hyperfocus geekily on this right now, but I’ve learned not to.)
Omaha and I agreed not to discuss the world while we were out. It was impossible to keep that promise completely; sometimes, while driving from the campsite to an active trailhead we’d pass through a zone with radio and snatches of what was going on in the world would filter into my imagination. I don’t know about Omaha, she’s the event-driven, extrovert type; but I learned just how long it takes to get my imagination back into the groove of whatever it was I wanted most to think about.
The answer, sometimes, was all day. I’d have to go read something ridiculous (I read a lot of Lovecraft) just to flush all the world’s anxieties back out of my head.
I’m currently riding high on a week of being well-rested as well as alcohol and drug (even prescription drug) free, at least for the cognitive drugs. (I still took my statin and allergy meds, duh.) I gave my future self a list of to-dos that, so far, future self has agreed are sensible and workable. Some are more challenging than others, and today has been little more than “get re-aligned with all projects, both professional and personal, after being off-line for 9 days,” so we’ll see how far I get on any of them for realz of course.
This is a thing I have to remember, this is the thing all those “do your big thing first thing in the morning before anything else” stories are about: you do your best work when your mind is uncluttered, and the one thing the black slab in your pocket and the email queue on your desk want to do, the one thing they want, is to grab your attention for their purposes not yours, and if you have any intellectual life at all, there are a lot of processes out there vying for your attention.
They create the very clutter they’re trying to break through and, in the process, they deny you your rightful control over your own attention.
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