I think I’m going to do a short series of quick entries about adhd-isms that I have developed over the years. Not sure where I’m going with this yet. But I’m pretty sure it’ll be helpful.
the infinite possibilities theory is my favorite thing about ADHD people. But it is also one of the things that holds us back the most. As always, it doesn’t apply to everybody. We don’t all present the same way as ADHD people. But there are trends. And this is a pretty strong one under the heading of the average ADHD or is more likely to be creative than the average human.
the vast majority of us do not suffer from a lack of ideas. If anything, we are overwhelmed by all of the amazing ideas we have. In fact, that can be paralyzing if executive function and decision making are weaknesses. I always make a joke about the handy guy who sees a broken bike in the trash and says that’s awesome it’s only missing one brake cable three spokes and a gear. I could totally fix that up and have a new bike or sell it on craigslist. Most of my clients smile and identify with this in some way. Your thing might not be the bike. But most of us have a thing or a few things that we get a little dopamine hit from acquiring and a more substantial dopamine hit from the potential Joy of what we can make it into.
The problem with having so many great ideas, is that it’s basically impossible to execute all of them. It may not even be possible to execute most of them. I always tell my clients that you may have to endure the pain of letting 97 ideas go in order to get the three best or the three most fun ideas done. Perhaps 97 to 3 is a bit hyperbolic. But I’ve got some clients who’ve got a lot of ideas. But lately I’ve been seeing clients who really struggle with this like those hundred ideas are their children and they have to pick their three favorite. I think I could do another post on strategies to do that. But I’d like to stick to the idea of acceptance today and let the reader mull over how this thing affects their life and what they can do to manage it.
so, lastly, I will point out that it is much easier to bring things into our life then use our executive function and decision making to get them out of our lives. So that little hit of dopamine we get from acquiring things or imagining this project that we’re going to do, can end up being pretty maladaptive if you end up being the guy with 12 unfinished bicycles in your basement. So think about that.