Yes its not as simple as a gene in Mental Health world. Like you say many other factors go into development.
Please do! And share with me once it’s finished, if you feel so inclined 
That’s a good question and although ADHD definitely can get in the way when it comes to learning new gear I think it’s more about your personality and relationship with gear.
For me I hate watching videos as a learning tool for new gear (although I watch demos of random gear nearly every damn day)
I can’t say that I absolutely love reading manuals but I don’t hate it and at times I enjoy it but I never ever read the manual first .
Essentially my way of learning new gear is turning it on and just diving head first into it, I find that most gear these days is mostly self explanatory like if you’re trying to figure out how to do something it’s more often then not the thing that you would do if you made the gear.
With some exceptions like the Octatrack for example.
When I’m learning something that’s not terribly intuitive I do the same thing I dive in, I may go through the presets a little I tweak stuff I look though the menus and options. Basically I just play and for me that’s the most exciting time.
Then when I hit a wall as far as figuring out how to perform a specific function I do 1 of 2 things depending on the function I’m trying to figure out, if it’s something simple like how to save a pattern or something I’ll literally just Google it and usually it will come up on some forum somewhere. But if it’s a function that’s more complex or a function that’s tied to other functionality then I’ll look it up in the manual.
I do that for the first week or so with a new piece of gear then once I’ve gone as far as I can with it then I’ll read the manual from start to finish, usually I download the .pdf and save it to my phone and read it in bed at night or something.
I find this way of learning to be the most efficient for me because if I read the manual before I experience the gear first then I don’t really have a point of reference, nothing to grab on to so it’s boring. I don’t watch tutorials for two reasons, one is that the vast majority of people who make YouTube content are striving to be “influencers” so they end up talking about themselves and making the video about themselves and whatever their thing is and I can’t stand siting though that. There are a few exceptions to this where they’re people who make content that focuses primarily on the gear or whatever the subject matter is and those content creators are rare and fantastic but even with them I am too impatient to sit through a video where they start at the beginning and end at the end that type of linear learning is reminiscent of traditional school and it just doesn’t click with me (although there are always exceptions, I’ve definitely enjoyed videos on gear that I’m thinking about buying that explain all the functionality like loopop’s videos are great for that).
So for me it’s all about diving in, exploring and having fun then once I’ve familiarized myself with as much as I can I’ll read the manual from start to finish and I find that having had the hands on experience gives my mind something to grab on to while I’m reading the manual and the information just absorbs. It makes it enjoyable, I’ll be reading one section and be like yup I know this I figured this out already, okay yup, got it no problem then I’ll come across something that tells me about functionality that I didn’t find myself and it clicks like oh okay nice that makes sense, then as I read on I’ll also pick up the stuff that I had hit a wall with and I’ll just read and study that in a traditional way and absorb it. I treat it like I’m studying something, I’ve experimented as much as I can then I read at night then I take the new info and test it out the next day.
Occasionally they’ll be a piece of gear that’s a little more complex or unintuitive and in that case after I’ve played with it for a few days or a week like I usually do and once I’ve skimmed though the manual I will set aside time to crack open the manual while I’m in front of the gear and I’ll read it from start to finish while actually trying out each function described in the manual as I read it and that works very well for me too.
I did that with the Octatrack and that’s what made it click for me.
This method of learning has worked for me across dozens of pieces of gear over the last 20 years and it works so well that when I’m playing around with gear or writing something it’s all muscle memory, I can work on all 5 of my Elektron boxes and other pieces of hardware and synths at the same time and I never have to stop to figure out how to do something I just reach for it and it happens, in fact that’s why I love Elektron gear so much is because it’s so easy to break everything down to muscle memory. It’s interesting because I could perform any function on any of the 5 Elektrons quickly while I’m working but if someone were to ask me how to perform a specific function on a specific machine I’d have to look it up half the time.
It’s like playing video games, when you’re really good at a game and then hand the controller to a friend and they ask you how to do a certain move or something I have to take the controller back and do the move so I can think about it and explain it, that’s how I am with gear once I’ve learned it this way.
Anyways hope all this makes sense and is relatable on some level, and for what it’s worth your age has nothing to do with it, I’ve been into this since I was 19, I’m 39 now and I don’t find learning new gear to be anymore difficult now then when I was younger in fact I think it’s usually easier because of years of experience across so much different gear there’s a lot of similarities.
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Right, well I’ve found the best thing is medication, reflection, openness with other people regarding your diagnosis and yeah, physical excersize or rather, sufficient amount of mental and physical stimulation. Medication has helped me so much to cope with day to day life, even if it’s sadly dampened my creativity a bit.
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This is such an interesting topic, thanks for all of the advice and information provided so far. Have strong feeling that I could have ADD (endless procrastination, lacklustre educational performance, overthinking things, not always great at personal relationships) but am a little confused by the similarities between ADHD/ADD and anxiety or depression. My work provide some supports for mental health issues and I’ve been trying a CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) app but i think it probably is time to get assessed and look at counselling/medication -have been finding everyday life pretty tough the last few years and need to get out of a rut.
Symptoms can be very similar but I guess the main difference is ADHD folks are just wired differently and can’t be cured. Meds and behavioural therapy can help, but in the end we’re always different from neurotypical folks.
So I guess go to a doctor? Because the treatments used can be very different and treating depression when the underlying reason for it is ADHD will not work in the long run.
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I needed to treat anxiety and depression to see clear enough I needed assessing for ADHD. Chances are they will accompany ADHD at least some of the time.
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For sure, getting diagnosed at 36 I’ve had bouts of high anxiety and depression all my life, but never really thought about ADHD until in recent years. Now with my diagnosis, medication and honesty with people regarding the difficulties I have I feel a lot less anxious or depressed than ever in my adulthood.
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Yeah, I think I will try and get a handle on the depression first and then take it from there. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
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There’s definitely a relief that comes with understanding that you’re not broken, society is (by design, our bodies and minds are exploited. I imagine non-NTs if not at a greater rate, in specific ways that exploit our goodwill and desires to not exploit others when in corporate gigs under capitalism.)
Even without the diagnosis, not having to internalize that you’re stupid, lazy, some sort of alien creature because others are un-empathetic to those who aren’t like them.
I’ve got the distractible ADD diagnosis for the purposes of medication, ASD I haven’t bothered with beyond seeking out a counselor who is spice-brained and mostly works with those clients so you don’t have to explain yet another concept you barely understand.
Granted, it’s a lot easier to explain when you feel “not normal” in life versus trying to narrow down what “neurotypical” looks like broadly or in a specific person.
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I think I’m gonna buy a fidget ring or something to use for stimming while in meetings and such, I’ve previously just tapped my feet or doomscrolled on the phone but I kind of want to stop doing stuff that other people notice so easily.
If I read correctly you deny the existence of one of the treatable major neuropsychiatric disorders? And you teach children. Ok. So far nothing new to the world. Whst you mean (hyperactive symptoms in normotypical children) is called VAST (variable attention stimulus trait) (Hallowell 2021) It is something else.
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I am having trouble understanding your post. I was sharing my own experience and responding specifically to a previous post. I am not sure what I’m denying. If you are looking for someone to prescribe Ritalin to kids, I am a teacher. You will have to find a doctor for that.
I was a hyperactive kindergartner. My teacher suggested to my mom that she put me on hyperactivity medication. My mom said no. I guess that made me more of a pain in the ass for my teacher. Hyperactive kids are a management issue for teachers. This presents a potential conflict of interest, between the needs of the student and the wishes of the teacher…in regard to discussions about medicating kids.
What utter rubbish.
I’m sorry to offend you. I’ve been asked to take down a previous post. I tend to fixate on the ways our society and media drive ADHD. Perhaps that created the impression that I’m not sensitive to human suffering.
I understand what you were rhetorically saying - that society should be the thing that changes, to have a place for different types of people like the kids with adhd, instead of making these “neurodivergent” kids at fault and getting them to change/fit in just to make things easier to manage or whatever. I agree with that. Only I do believe that adhd does exist and people can be helped by getting it diagnosed.
Just trying to smooth things over here / express my understanding (if I understand you correct indeed) - not reignite the strong reactions against you.
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First the moon landing, now ADHD… Is there anything they won’t lie us about??
Attention economy is a problem for society but works to exploit neurotypicals alongside.
It didn’t invent how individuals are tuned to ADHD or Autism, best to avoid or at least phrase more specifically to avoid conflating correlation for causative.
I’m sure hostile patterns existed in the past to get children gambling, well before industrial psychology in social media, phone app purchases. or recent NFT scams targeting minors.
Autistic and ADD children are handled in the context of how difficult they are for their parents and a regimented one size fits all teaching modality.
All of this requires vast amounts of masking and occasional abuse to cause kids to fit into a single model for learning.
None of this is good for child development and causes effects well into adulthood.
I understand what you are saying and your concerns. I would ask that if you know any Autistic or ADD polarities of non-nt to talk to them more about how they grew up with the only solution presented was to perform “normal” in order to people-please and not be even more likely to be forced out of society.
Alternately, this recent book seems to be well regarded and i’ve enjoyed it- Unmasking Autism by Devon Price: 9780593235232 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
Again, empathetic to anyone tasked to bring a single path for learning and how that is affected by corporate and industrial psychology targeting the brains of kids. But the problems don’t “create ADD” so much as exploit human patterns, which there is some nuance over, but how we talk about it matters.
I was told to medicate when younger, mother did not, but what did that lead to? Being forced into a model for learning and participation in society that never left space for me. There are sometimes worse options that can come with a childhood or even adult diagnosis!
But being forced into therapies of “masking” or being told you’re just “normal” is not helpful either.
It’s a tough conundrum but systems do need to change, from the military-grade behavior control tuning of games to the inflexibility of some public school systems.
Hopefully my post(s) are taken in good spirits and not attack, my frustrations are with bureaucracies designed to “efficiently” take one consistent input with one consistent output.
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It’s insane how obvious these issues are when you just glance a critical eye over simple things like the morning routine dropping kids off at primary school.
You can always spot the neurodiverse kids. They’re the ones who don’t want to go in, who are invariably being threatened with all sorts of exclusions in order to try to make them conform. It’s fucking disgusting, and what’s worse is the schools have brainwashed nearly everyone into their way of thinking. Fit in or fuck off, that should be the motto of nearly every school in Britain.
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