Christin White

Audiobooks have been a massive help to me, both for the information and often the distraction. Thing is, a lot ADHD people — from what I’ve experienced and other ADHD people I’ve talked to — don’t listen to books the way neurotypical people do either. In this case, it actually works in our favor.

When I listen to a book at a normal speed there’s just too much time between the words and ideas and my brain checks out with a million distracting thoughts. If I want to listen to a book and actually get some level of comprehension, I have to be playing it at 2.5–3x speed (depending on the narrator and subject matter). Doing that provides enough stimulation to keep me engaged in what I’m listening to.

It does take practice though, you have to start slow, 1.5 –2x speed and increment upward, people who hear something I’m listening to and say it doesn’t even sound like English. It also took some time to really adapt to paying attention, the first ten books or so I listened to two or three times back to back just to get it all but by the end of that I was good with most material. Drier informational non-fiction can sometimes still require a second listen but not usually.

Completely aside from that, having something I can flip on to keep my brain engaged when doing boring tasks like driving and cleaning also helps me keep up my motivation and minimize procrastination.

Your library probably has audiobooks through Libby or another app, I think it’s worth a try and others have told me the same thing. Try alternating some of the books mentioned above with fiction or something else that really interests you.

My god, that is absolutely something I have. It’s something I struggle with every single day working gig jobs that exploit people but provide necessary freedom right now. Whether it’s Uber’s masterclass in exploitative UX or just restaurant treating me or other people poorly I’m almost constantly angry when I’m working and it’s so hard to let go. I’ve complained to Uber about issues, written poor yelp reviews, etc. but no one actually cares so I feel powerless and voiceless. The best thing I can do is blacklist places that disrespectful of people and shove my anger at the gig company in a box until I can escape this situation.

A coworker once defined regex as a write-only language and he definitely had a point. I love regex but it can be time consuming figuring out exactly what a complex regex expression is doing.