I didn't get diagnosed until my late 20s, so I feel like I can articulate some of the differences. One of the things that contributed to that is that I am incredibly lucky in that math, statistics, and computer science are the things that most capture my interest. It never really manifested itself in my school work until now, graduate school, where things become a lot more open-ended and self-driven. I need incremental goals or I start to flounder.

I went to the doctor for depression, but she said that it seemed a lot like diagnosed ADHD (which often manifests itself as depression because of dissatisfaction with many aspects of your behavior). Before I start that I'd like to say something that the psychologist that evaluated me told me. The key aspect to ADHD is the dysfunction it causes. I'm not a psychologist or a doctor, but basically the thing that clearly signifies ADHD is the severity of the negative impacts in different aspects of your life.

For me some things that I always hated about myself and frustrated the hell out of other people:

She would ask me to do things and I'd completely forget about them after she left for the day. She'd call on her way home and it would immediately trigger my list of things I was supposed to do. I'd stress out and rush to do them before she got home. It wasn't that I didn't want to do them, or that I didn't care enough to do them. It was that they literally never entered my mind without an external trigger. I tried writing todo lists, and I would just not look at the todo list.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if something is interesting, I can literally sit in my chair for 20 hours without eating or drinking. If someone tries to talk to me, I literally do not hear them. I don't ignore them, I just don't hear it. This was a lot worse when I lived by myself. I would regularly sit down in the morning to do something and find that I'd completely forgotten to go to class, eat, drink anything, and that it was now 7 in the evening. If I was lucky, then the original task would be complete or almost complete. If I wasn't then I'd spent the last 10 hours weighing the pros and cons of various ways to properly install python on a fresh computer (venv, virtualenv with or without virtualenvwrapper, etc.). For my uses, it literally does not matter, but I've still done this multiple times. I've spent way too much time responding, in excruciating detail, to Reddit/HN comments when all I'm going to get out of it is, "Cool. Thanks."

I know this can sound like standard procrastination, but I absolutely don't want to do these things. I have been in so many arguments about forgotten obligations or accusations of ignoring someone. It's so frustrating. You start to see yourself as someone that's unreliable and incorporate being forgetful and flighty into your own self image.

I and my wife were pretty skeptical at first, but, after my first month on medication, I took care of so many important things that I just hadn't done for years (like applying for the master's degree that I earned as part of my PhD) and got more done on my dissertation than I had in the last four. It's still not easy, but it makes it easier for me. I can actually remember to look at all the lists I make now, and I can stop myself after 10 minutes of an obsessive rabbit hole now instead of after 10 hours when my bladder is bursting.

It's not about cheerfully being able to do things we don't want to do. It's about actually remembering to do them. ADHD isn't about not being able to pay attention to anything. It's about not being able to regulate the things you pay attention to. It's about being able to even out the deeply obsessive blessing/curse attention black hole that is your natural state.