> Hey I never ran a day in my life. I found out if I take steroids I can jump start my running in 3 months. Turns out I’m a great runner, so I must have been a great runner all this time and just need a therapeutic dose of steroids to show that I had chemical deficiency that easily solved it. Now life is much more fair for me.

what is the purpose of this line of argument. do we agree that this is good? because this feels good.

> Look, once your life depends on a decision you know was a trade off (you feel entitled to whatever it is you don’t have from not putting in the actual work), it’s going to take intense mental gymnastics to feel sound as a person.

i struggle to understand what you’re saying here. could you provide a concrete example of a life depending on a decision that was a trade off?

i feel so much more sound as a person now that i can off load some of the guilt for being so bad at the simple things onto something else, i am infact much more sound than i have ever been. this doesn’t diminish my responsibility to change myself and my environment so that i can do those simple things, it simply changes my map and thus the strategies that i should use to accomplish my goals.

i’m sure you would agree that nothing comes for free. i am not saying that drugs will make me super man or that neurotypical people are super human.

though, to a person with glasses, 20:20 vision does seem pretty super human. as does the ability to do contact sports without massive preparation (goggles, contact lenses etc). in this metaphor the person with glasses is like the person with adhd fyi.

> But I can help you,

bold claims sir. given our conversation, i am doubtful of your ability to help anyone.

> repeat after me. This life wasn’t going great, so I made a decision. It’s better now, and I can live with it and fuck anyone else.

i’m not sure what this is supposed to do for me. do i say it into a mirror and Frederick Hayek will appear and save me from serfdom?

my life was difficult. i discovered that there are reasons a touch beyond my control that were causing that. i took medicine, adjusted my ways and asked others to help by adjusting how they help me. it is still difficult but i feel less bad about it. fuck anyone that tries to diminish the work it took to achieve that.

the map is not the territory.

> All I’m saying is, don’t you dare sell that confirmation bias back into the zeitgeist.

what confirmation bias? which zeitgeist?

> We can be friends, I’ve been there (probably still there).

i feel that, and beyond this ultimately stupid argument i hope stuff stays good for you.

> Certainly don’t try to sell it to the person that put in 3 years running, and the only difference between you and that person was an unprovable chemical deficiency.

i’m not sure exactly what you’re saying here. the person who ran for 3 years was me. i didn’t sell anything to them. now i’m less depressed and anxious about my life excersizing is much easier. i can strive now there is hope again. why do you thin the source of that hope shouldn’t exist (in the face of some pretty good science that says otherwise).

> The guy waking up everyday to run never felt like it was never going to amount to anything once, right? They just had it in them, just like you.

yes i did and yes i did!

> It’s all in you, like magic, just needs to brought out.

this i can get down with. totally true.

> Just own your decision in it’s entirety. No one is a saint here.

what decision? to take medication? i didn’t decide that, my doctor did.

Edit:

> > is not one of the greatest productivity strategies to break large complex things (passing an exam) into smaller, manageable tasks (a few hours of study a day). i do not buy this line.

> This retort is a dead give away of entitlement. Everyone breaks down studying like this, Jesus.

wait, so you’re saying that this is in-fact innate and doesn’t need to be taught?

> How special do some of you think you are? This is all supposed come freely to you?

no, i said that i had to explicitly learn it. it would seem that it is you who thinks it should come freely. i specifically stated that i do not think this practice is innate and that many of us need to learn how to apply it (i.e it is a skill). thus, it by definition requires work to learn, develop and apply.

is it special to hope that the community i exist in as a sentient being would teach me these learnable skills? i don’t think so but if that’s entitlement call me entitled and bring some more of it!

> Read a chapter a day,

before you can know how to read a chapter, you must know how to read a book ;).

to be explicit, you’ve got to be able to see a big thing and break it down first, before you can plan the execution. then you need to organize (combine resources and time) to execute the individual tasks. the organization part is the hard bit for people like me btw. can make a plan. can do a task. struggle to translate from the first to the later (get myself, the resource, to start the tasks at the appropriate times). i’m an asynchronous job queue with 1 worker and a queue size of 1, new jobs have the highest priority.

> and if some of you truly exhibit the impulsivity of dogs (the wind can distract you apparently), then read a page a day, and if you can’t do that, read a word a day. This is how people do it. Bunch of hidden brainiacs think they can just take a book and place it near their forehead and instantly absorb it and then cry foul when it doesn’t happen.

just lol. people with adhd aren’t dogs, come on. that straw man you constructed is so absurd. im not saying neurotypical people can magically consume the information in a book (though who doesnt want that power right!!!) and meds wont magically enable me to.

i don’t actually have much of a problem with reading tbh. it’s not stopping reading. my problems are not around attention and tasks that can be done in flow. i would just like to be able to stick to a multi day plan without waking up tomorrow and being totally unable to do so.

> And the last thing I want to add is, you won’t have fun doing any of the above stuff. It’s never going to be fun and it never is fun for anyone. The only joy you’ll get is at the very end when you succeed.

if nothing is fun, what is the point? im lucky, i found the hyperfocus on my studies super fun! so fun i sort of burned myself out on them (less fun).

the way i see it, success is either now or never because there is no end state. we live and we die. you either enjoy living or don’t. you can trade time now for time later, sure but that’s a gamble and like i mentioned, i don’t like gambling.

> Yep, classical delayed gratification.
Now we get closer to the truth, yeah?

you’re about as far from The Truth (tm) as we can get though i think you’ve shown us you truth.