Intro
The biggest driver in content within this blog is my personal need to document many of my thoughts and realizations. The fact that it’s public is (of course) a choice. It’s not like one can accidentally type a very specific combination of keys, and accidentally launch a blog publicly. However, making it public is also part of this “self inflicted” therapy.
Reading, speaking, moving and thinking too fast have been traits of mine since a very young age. More than traits, I believe they are defining characteristics. The talking specially, as I’m sure some people struggle to communicate with me. If I don’t actively slow down my tempo and actively control my speech, it easily turns to it’s default (alas very defining) mumble.
The interesting thing about this is that I am also a victim of my own brain activity.
How ADHD affects the brain
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent patterns of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. People with ADHD often struggle (in different ranges) with tasks requiring attention, organization, and impulse control. Chemically, ADHD is associated with imbalances in dopamine and norepinephrine, which are neurotransmitter chemicals that play crucial roles in regulating said attention and focus.
In sum, it’s a too active, too eager, too energetic of a brain, that keeps getting bored with something and is always looking for another puzzle to solve.
As an example, the reason why I talk way too fast is because I have too many concurrent thoughts racing and I want to spill them all out. In my mind, that conversation thread is old news and I want to move to the follow up.
What is interesting is that it brings many benefits such as creativity, hyperfocus, entrepreneurial spirit and adaptability. These and how they impact my personal life are on its own a separate train of thought - that I now need to actively put a stop to otherwise I will never finish this - which I will eventually also think and write about.
Following the same example, I’m pretty sure this is also why my speech (when perceivable) is also often rich in snappy (mostly harmless) sarcasm and laughable remarks.
Regardless of all the benefits, the imbalance in neurotransmitters has a very real impact on how I go about my day. Unlike (I would risk to say) most people, I am very conscious about how I plan most things around my day and week to make sure I get all the benefits of this “exotic” brain, with none of the downsides.
At the same time, it’s very easy for me to spend 20 hours dissecting a new found interest, neglecting meals and work - dopamine kicks in, hyperfocus kicks in, I am very happy - while realizing afterwards that I’ve neglected some work and feel very bad about it - dopamine gets way too low.
Again, as an example, if there is something I missed at work like an improvement on a recruitment process that someone pointed out and I could have spotted myself, my brain will feel tempted to do two things: Race back in memory lane and get all of the reasons why this happened, why it could have been prevented, why I didn’t see this and why other people did, but all simultaneously; And it will lower neurotransmitter chemicals to make feel like crap.
While both being critic of oneself and feeling bad for mistakes are very important to keep improving in life, these need to be taken care of adequately and in proportion. The great news is that they easily can.
To make the best out of every day, a combination of critical thinking and journaling is amazingly beneficial. While critical thinking forces me to constantly look back and think about the reasons, consequences, outcomes and lessons to be learned about day to day things such as successes and failures; journaling provides the tool to slow down my brain enough to take its time to learn its lessons. It turns out that I may be a very fast talker, but I’m just an average typist.
Critical Thinking & Journaling
Overthinking and being over critic of myself goes back as far as I can remember. I attribute a vast majority of my relative and modest success in life to this. It’s an organic habit developed somewhere in infancy and it’s only gotten more frequent and more structured. Without frequent moments of contemplation and realization, one’s brain (and life) can easily run wild and wander, depriving oneself from achieving all (or at least some) of what we set out to. This is especially relevant to ADHD minds.
Journaling as in “the act of regularly recording personal thoughts, experiences, and reflections in a written or digital format” is also something that has been organically adopted throughout adolescence as a necessity to structure thought. As mentioned before, putting a though on a paper immediately requires two actions: Slowing down enough to type it and structure it enough to make it understandable; and achieve one immediate outcome: One can look back and re-read it as a form of self explanation. For racy minds with a tendency to lower attention spans, some thoughts are often too fast and volatile to allow one to process and learn from them. Talking to one self through writing achieves this with a plus: It’s there for posterity which means that every time one goes down an old rabbit hole of thought, we can always go back to what our conclusions were at any given time and start from there.
The fact that this is all public content is inherently pushing for the thoughts to be extra concise, articulate and structured. All of it contribute to the main goals: constantly evaluating oneself and pushing for self improvement.
I’d add that both “critical thinking” and “journaling” terms are newly found words for things I have been doing for decades, which proves the point of how important these are.
Do’s and dont’s
The format and frequency can and will vary between use cases, and I don’t believe there is a right and wrong way. Part of it is actually (again) commit to something, be critic about the current process, write down what’s working and what isn’t, and see if one should adapt and how.
If I could summarize the works and what doesn’t, I would focus on:
Consistency
This is the key for success. The less “backlog” to process there is the easier it becomes to process it all. The goal is always to be at ease, conscious and aware of one’s mistakes and successes to not let the outcomes of these to dictate next actions.
Keeping track of the backlog
Can’t stress enough the importance of reading back these thoughts. More often than not, we find ourselves in situations we’ve been and conquered before. Make it easy on yourself, listen to your past you.
Don’t just scratch the surface
For a long time basic “notes to self” were the go-to for this. I kept (and keep) small note books for pretty much every aspect of life. Although this works wonders, I find that digging a bit deeper in the “why” and “how” does wonders for branding these lessons in the back of one’s head.
Again, specially for active minds, when running on instinct as lack of a better judgement, it’s better to have these lessons burnt into our brain.
Don’t overdo or over engineer it
Using an old well known slogan, “just do it”. The format, frequency, what works and doesn’t will come as part of the process. The trick is to start with something simple and go from there.
One might consider that doing a blog around this is over engineering it. My argument is that I am an IT engineer and the ins and outs of putting a blog out is also part of my field of interest.