Why is “easy” so “hard” for ADHD people?
I think I touched on this a little bit a few weeks ago. But I partially can’t remember and I’m sure it can use repetition and more flushing out anyway. And it’s a direct continuation from last week. We have established that boredom is our kryptonite. Let’s expand that definition to include boredom, tedium, repetition, lack of variety, or really anything that falls under the heading of what we call a non-preferred task. This often manifests in even the brightest and most capable ADHD people as a the mind-bending paradox of “easy” being really “hard.” But let’s back up for a second. What do I mean by hard? I know, not a word you really need to think of a definition for. What if we changed it so difficult? How about challenging? How about attentionally challenging? Are you following me? Language is important. I have always said there’s a word missing in English between want and be able to. When we don’t do something that we know is important, most people framed that as, “I didn’t want to.” Of course they wanted to do it. Why the hell else would we be talking about it and Coaching? OK. I recognize that’s a slight oversimplification. And I think I’ll do a post about the difference between wanting the result of something and wanting to engage in the process of doing it sometime soon, if I haven’t recently already. But my point is we always default to the word want, which really is like saying we have a character flaw and is undermining in the long term, because we don’t know how to conceptualize not being able to do a thing that we are aware we are capable of doing. Don’t think about that sentence for too long. It’ll make your head…