How "Groundhogs Day" changed my life

Is there something you want to be able to do, but can't do it yet? Or are there things that you wish you could do a little faster, reading, typing, critical analysis, anything? Then there are those useless talents that everybody wants to have, but never tries, like juggling, throwing cards into a hat? All of these things appeal to me, and I was jealous of ... For having the time to acquire these talents in the movie Groundhogs Day.

well this movie got me thinking, how much time do we have that we don't use? How often do you find yourself waiting at the stop light, or at the doctors office, anywhere where you can't really do something productive, but have time? I say, use that time. Doing what? Improving your ability to learn. Increasing the connection between the left and right sides of your brain. Maybe learn a language, or five. The limits are boundless, but I don't think I have sold you on the benefits of the idea.

Why do these useless talents matter? I recently started to learn how to do several things left handed. One of these is writing left handed, and mirror, which is more natural for the strokes, but not for the brain. And what did I notice about my normal writing? My penmanship has improved drastically. It almost looks like another persons writing. The drawbacks area that it only lasts for several hours at the moment, as I am not proficient at writing left handed yet, so I am developing theories as to why this happens, but anyways. It also, in my opinion, helps tap into the creative part of my brain. The best people at problem solving, have the ability to switch between highly logical and highly creative sides of their brain. Some of this ability is innate, or at least fostered at an early age, but I believe the ability to improve this connection, however weak it may be at the moment, never goes away.

Well, I must be off to class, but I will add more later in the day.

Ok, I am back. So another talent I recently acquired, is speed reading. Now this one is a little tougher than some of them out there, but I think it will probably end up being most benefical. I am very suprised at the reaction I have gotten from this though. Several people have said things like "why would anyone want to read faster? I like reading for fun, not for work, and that seams like work to me." Or "I have heard you lose the enjoyment by doing reading fast." It is a tool. It would be like writing all of this down instead of typing it out. Are there fun aspects to writing as opposed to typing? Sure, I still write, but I also type, there is a place for both. How much you do of each depends on you. I journal in writing and typing. Sure I would like to only use one, but I use each for different purposes.

The other aspect is the time it takes to learn how to do this. Yea, it does take time and practice, but I will gain this back once I am faster at it. And I don't feel compelled to do it all the time, or to always be improving. There is a time for doing what you have always done, and a time to improve. I am also learning to only read what I want, and not feel compelled to read a whole book if I have gained the insight I was looking for, or if I really don't like the authors perspective, or if they are negative, or whatever. It is very liberating for me to not feel this pressure.

I find it interesting to see how stuck in their ways people, and myself, can sometimes be. It is like someone trying to convince me that they enjoy the hunt and peck method of typing, and that they could not imagine the drudgery of having to use qwery, and how they would lose the aesthetic value of typing and searching for the right keys, or maybe the connection they had with the computer when hunting and pecking. Just doesn't make sense to me. But change is a slow process, and I am programming myself to become accustomed to change. So I don't mind peoples apprehension to it, I just want to understand what their misgivings are, so I can help them to overcome it to the degree they are willing to.

One way I am going to try to help people overcome their reluctance to positive change, is a comedy routine at a standup club. I am writing the material for this in between classes and whenever (in my free time, ha ha ha, get it? Ok, so I am very busy, but I still have tons of little moments here and there to expend mental energy in multiple avenues of creativity). We shall see how this goes, if it is well received at all. It will be an experiment at how to get the audience on my side, then speak the truth in love, and still have them accept me enough to believe what I am saying. I'll write about this later. Go out there and try some new stuff, and let me know, ok?

Am I crazy?

No, I am not. But sometimes I wonder how much of my personal experience is similar to other peoples experiences. So I am in this acrylic painting class, and experiencing the joys of color theory, artistic layout, so many new avenues of thoughts, it is inspiring. I then go to work, and suddenly I see art everywhere, I look at the shot glasses and the sweet espresso pouring into them, with the Guinness like separation of creme from the body of the shot, and I see a painting at work. Everywhere I look, I see possibilities and colors converging.

I go to Target, and I am overwhelmed with the colors and inputs. I walk by clothes, feeling the texture of each, I walk by shelves and see the converging lines of perceived vanishing points, with the contrast of colors filling my field of vision. I completely forget what I was there to do, and wallow in sensory input. Sometimes, without purpose, or even a recollection of what was causing this euphoria of sensation.

Ok, so honestly, this does not happen often. And it is an extreme case of the right amount of caffeine, and lack or overabundance of sleep, combined with the right frame of mind, like I was just drawing something, or wanted to draw something, or was daydreaming about drawing something(you get the idea).

I am working on what frame of mind caused this to happen, and how I can foster it in the right circumstances, and push it back in most other cases, but it is interesting in any case. I was driving with my parents about an hour ago, and I thought of a great analogy to what this was, and the adhd experience for me in general.

So you know the movie "A Beautiful Mind" Russell Crow is describing how he was able to overcome skitsophrania, he would not feed the different identities. If he saw a person that he had realized was not really in existence, he did not acknowledge it. He would not put himself in situations that would bring about the delusions.
Now for my experience. I work near a framing company, they frame paintings and the such. Every time I walk by, I notice a new painting or print, and am inspired by the colors, brush work, overall design of the piece, but I keep walking at my normal fast pace. I would love nothing more than to sit down on the sidewalk outside and contemplate the foremost painting for hours. Then each piece would require the due respect I would want to give it now that I have new appreciation for art. But I can't, so I don't even entertain this idea in the slightest. Do I think about the frozen image in my head often throughout the day, you bet. Do I contemplate the design of the foremost painting while I drive, more than you can ever know. But I have learned to focus my mind on what is at hand, and allow it to roam in the fenced in areas of what I am doing. It still goes through the same process at work, but concerning work, how I can improve at work, what I would do if I were a district manager at work, on and on and on it goes.

The trick with focusing my mind, is to look at what I am supposed to be doing from a new perspective. How would a stock holder view my actions of what I am doing? What if they were making a movie of me throwing these cups behind my back as I steam milk. People say I look like tom cruse as I spin wiped creme, and toss the tea shakers.

Who am I? What is identity?

So what if I go through a midlife crisis every month or so. It is good to find out some of these answers, or at least ask them. What makes you, ? It is not what you do, not what you look like, who you hang out with, or even what you did in the past. (I think I wrote about this a while ago, but I am going to be taking it deeper, besides, this is how adhd works, you get the same ideas over and over again, you just take them further each time.) It is what you decide to do right now. What you did in the past will affect how easy it is to make the right decision, but that does not mean you will make the right one. And if you were a "bad" person, you still have the ability to make the right decision, it just might go against your accumulated experience up to that point.

(to let you in on some though processes, I am thinking and deciding how deep to go with this topic. What the hey, lets show you some thought process organization.

Topics I am thinking of covering

The core of consciousness, do we really decide our actions, and to what degree

Free will

divergence between self perception and others perceptions

Can we change who we are, and to what degree?

The influence of other people's perceptions of us and its affects on our identity

So I am sitting in starbucks(ina and Thornydale) using these questions to focus my thought on the topic at hand, and struggling in myself to see which ones relate more to the topic I want to discuss, and which would lead away from it, however relevant they may be. I will go with the last line of questioning, and maybe bring some of the others in as they relate. But in my mind, they are all inter related, in ways that I have not thought through yet. Lets get back to topic, if one does actually exist.

If I am aware that a specific person, call them Bob for fun, believes that I am uncoordinated, and I am aware his perception and belief of this, then I begin to act this way (mind trailing off to Quantum Leap episode that deals with this issue, no, come back mind, ok back for now). Well I am highly coordinated(count'em, juggle 5 balls, ride unicycle, like to swing dance, do magic tricks, manipulations, flourishes with cards, bla bla bla) I trip and am aware of what I did, and glance over to see if Bob noticed. Now I become aware of each instance of a misstep, or all of the normal things that people do, but when accentuated through the perceptual filter of heightened awareness, becomes uncoordinated behavior. I may begin to see myself as this klutzy person, and I start noticing every instance of this new formed identity, I start self fulfilling prophecies and perceptions. I have seen this scenario happen over and over again, someone forms opinion based of perception, I become aware of their perception and act according to it.

Here is a worse one. It is not really what believe, simply what you think they believe, that starts to affect you. This is where trouble happens. But how can you really know what others think about you? Here again multiple ideas come to mind.

I believe that you can never fully understand what someone thinks of you. Communication is imperfect at best, and humans do not have full disclosure with each other using this impaired communication. So, take deep breath and listen intently, we can never fully understand how other people perceive us, or what their opinion of us is. No matter what they say, there are underlying feelings that they will not want to express, or can't (because of impaired communication). Lets put an example on this one. You ask, "do these pants make me look fat?". Whomever you asked, can never go completely into their feelings on this subject, because of social constructs of the way communication should happen, (read don't be too honest, but try to hint at true opinion). What if this pant analyzer wanted to be completely honest, they would have to write a dissertation on their understanding of what fat was, how you fit into some of the categories that they list, and do not fit into others. Then their opinion would get completely lost in the shear volume of information that was trying to be conveyed.

Again, I could go off in thousands of directions with topics in the last few paragraphs, but I will bring it back to a point, a leaf on the twig of the branch on the topic of Identity. What are the implications of never knowing what someone's opinions of us truly are? You can only ever get a broad picture of if they like you, and a small amount of info about the specific topic. (I realize I am on thin ice of understanding, both my understanding, and the limits of simplifying down such a complex topic, with lots of other issues involved, but lets proceed). What are the implications? You decide how much to believe of what someone says. "Yes, those pants make you look fat!". Well, decide for yourself how much of this you want to believe. What is their concept of fat? What positive aspects about the pants are they neglecting to mention, simply to sway your judgment. They can never fully express their feelings and thoughts concerning the subject of your pants, and if they could express it, your understanding of what their whole point in the conversation would be confused at best (what are they, a professor of pants, PhD pants, why do they care so much about the positives and negatives of wearing low rise verses classic look).

And I believe I am approaching this line of understanding, where my point gets lost the deeper I try to explain it. That idea, that the more you try to explain something, the more confusing the point gets, intrigues me, and I think I wrote about it before. Must refine, must focus, must condense to a intelligible level so I can share it with others. Ok so back to the first sentence of this paragraph, I am done. I hope you learned a little, disagreed a little, and try to carry some of these ideas further than I have. Let me know if you do, and I will try to write about the ones I touched on, but didn't want to allow to confuse the topic.

House of Cards

My ability to conform to a normal life, or just keep up with everything that I have going, is all a facade. Normal tasks take effort, mental processing to accomplish, and at some point I will forget do that thinking process, and everything will collapse like a house of cards. This is a genuine fear I have, just one that does not run my life.

I am a financial genius, and completely inept at the same time. I have grandiose plans of how to balance my two checking and two savings accounts(ok so 3 checking if you include the credit union that I have a savings account at). I have read several books on how to limit your spending, how to do a budget, and follow it, pay bills on time, the whole works. I am able to "keep it up" for a period of time, and then it falls apart. I forget to pay a credit cards, my checking account gets overdrafted several times, fees . Thankfully I am now able to fix these, and have minimal damage, thanks to learning how to fail, but I still fail a lot,.... a ton.

This same philosophy carries into my school work also. I am gunk hoe for about the first third of the semester, then my ability to stay up on the work wanes. I can't figure out why, but my drive just dies. I think it has something to do with an inability to see my work contributing to the end results that I am going after.

Now I am an extremely positive person, and happy. I enjoy work, and am pretty darn good at it. But this fear applies there too. What if several aspects that I am in charge of suddenly collapse, or I forget about them. Individual instances happen all the time. I don't allow my mind to wander at work, but this is sometimes how I remember to do things I didn't do the minuet I saw them. I notice an inordinate amount of things I could be doing at any moment, and am torn between which one has a higher priority, and which will have lasting benefit. I try to do the urgent, and the important tasks that are not urgent, as much as possible.

It is like, if anyone actually saw how many times I forget to do something, and then remember later and do it in the nick of time, they wouldn't trust me with anything. I am waiting to see if someone notices this, or if I have a high error rate on any given day, and someone sees how I really am.

After reading the above section, you might wonder how I sleep, or live with myself. No fear, there are positives. Many I might add.

For every time I am worried about what I am doing, and if it is the right thing to do, I discover a better way to do something, or a new insight about an old problem. I am always analyzing what I do and if it is efficient, so I find ways of being highly efficient. All of these ideas concerning my circumstance provide me with a very vivid memory, and ability to see where a system was breaking down, and usually how to fix it.

It is my belief that my strengths overshadow my weaknesses that helps me to see the light of day, and enjoy it. I am also able to put myself in perspective. For different people, there are different roles that they would fit into well, and ones that do not fit them at all. Can you imagine Einstein working as an accountant, daydreaming of relativity and science when he was supposed to be doing "work". Many great people in history were that way because they found where their talents and abilities applied, not how to improve their weaknesses so they weren't as bad. Sometimes their weaknesses were blaring, they just rarely had to encounter circumstances that would demand their use of the weakness.

So as you may have guessed, that is what I am trying to do, find where I fit, and what my strengths are. How can I use them to my advantage, and what "job" or work would best suit those strengths. We shall see, we shall see.

What ignites the mind?

Have you ever had something capture your imagination to the point of obsession? All you wanted to do was to understand that subject more, and talk to others that understand it or are a part of it.(For me, I continue to compile this list, and it goes 30 or 40 concepts or subjects deep, with the branching out of topics in each one of these being numerous).

How about the opposite? Have you ever really needed to do something, yet could not get any motivation to get it done, no matter how important it was? There are some things even within an interesting topic that I simply can't seam to accomplish.(managerial accounting, I would sit in class, understand the concepts, and so could not see the connection between understanding the subject and needing to do the homework. No amount of mental reasoning could force me to acknowledge this obvious point, that I really did need to do it.)

What am I talking about? There is a force, strong in people with adhd, that can cause ones imagination to be simply captured by a subject. At this moment in time for me, this is painting, and having an artists eye. Every where I look, I see things in a new way, with new eyes. Everything is about composition, lighting and shadows, negative space, bla bla ba.... you get the point. I feel as though I am on the verge of a major artistic breakthrough, and at any point an art critic will see my first painting(of which I have yet to complete) and will be enthralled with my grasp of color, and my innate sense of composition. Any of the subjects that have captured me like this(for it was not a willful action on my part, in most cases I was content to stay on the previous amazing idea), have been thoroughly engrossing, to the point of almost pushing out any and all of my former interests.

Concerning the inability to focus on a concept of no interest, this is also not a willful endeavor. I felt with these things, that no amount of cajoling could bring about the completion of the given task. I wondered if I was alone in these feelings, but countless times I have discussed this wall, or block, and have found each person that seams to exhibit adhd has had this problem.

more on these ideas to come. I will have to delve into some other issues to reconcile the problem I see with the mental attraction and mental blocks. I find the connection between seemingly opposite ideas interesting(why, I am not sure). But the fact that a new insight in one are can have extreme impact on others has always been intriguing to me. So as I develop a few of my others ideas, I think they will explain this idea further.

Weakness is strength

 
Know thyself. This is a good place to start. I used to think that I could accomplish absolutely anything and that it was natural to me to do this. I know this is optomistic, but it stems from reading some great books on learning, establishing daily habits, and not setting limits on yourself.

Yes I can do anything if I want to put alot of work into it, but not everything comes naturally to me, or would be easy. So what am I saying? I believe people with adhd are primmed to overcome new obstacles, be in environments where they are presented with new information, lots of stimlous, and tons of growth. We are good at learning. I may be good at learning accounting(which I am actually not at all) but to be an accountant would bore me to death. But I love learning the new concept and applying it to new things like the stock market, or predicting the next enron.

So know thyself. Know what you can and can't do. Use what you are able to do, your strengths, and apply those to the areas that need work. Work through strenghts to dimish weaknesses, or at least make them irrelivant. And as I am discovering, a strength is something that comes naturally. You might do it if you were never paid to, and probably do and don't(you do it, don't get paid for it).

I am not an highly internally motivated person. Once I have commited to doing something, then I am motivated by my commitment. But this is ok, really. I know that if someone were not there to tell me I needed to go to the doctor, clean my room, or change my oil, I would not really want to do it, and not only want, I would be incapable of doing many of these things without an external reminder. I am learning to impose these external reminders upon myslef, but that does not mean the condition does not exist. The degree I am willing to accept this about myself, the better I can get these simple tasks done in my life, and will be able to do the large and far reaching projects that I have the passion and dreams for.

New Insight

 
I have been doing some research as of late. Ok, so I have been doing a lot of research. I had a conversation with a person from work who has a close relative with bi polar disorder. This condition has intrigued me. I see many differences between adhd and bi polar, but there are a few similarities that show the inner workings of the brain that I am intrigued by.

I also just finished 2 books on speed reading, several on memory, more on adhd, new prognosis and treatment, lots of good stuff. So I have material to do quite a bit of writing for now.

I am not able to expand on this yet, but some of the ideas are very exciting to me, and we shall see where they take us.

Educating the Creative

 
At this moment, I have maybe 15, maybe 7 or 8 ideas that are going through my head, each of which is focused in on an idea. Those Ideas are coming from an article I read about a year old in a US. News about adult adhd. Of those ideas I will now chose one and focus it in. However, as I have learned about myself, in order to be able to write about the one idea, I will also write somewhere else about the other ideas, and how frustrating my conclusions are about that. But in a future post, you will get to read these as well.

So what am I choosing to write about? The positive, constructive things that someone could apply today to help them tomorrow. And I am illustrating my first principle as we speak. Learn how to focus on one aspect of the many. For any subject, there are an inordinate amount of perspectives one could take, but which are appropriate? This takes discipline to learn, but it is pivotal to the learning experience to do just that, learn which ideas are relevant. And it is almost never one. But what I chose to do is limit it to one, then allow my mind to branch out from there on the aspects of that particular idea, like right now, what would help a parent with a child with adhd right now.
-Guiding questions
Again I just illustrated it by asking myself a question that I can answer in may ways, as I ponder this question I almost always come up with several other questions before I am able to answer the first. This is where I failed in school, the teacher would ask a question, and I would start thinking of her warped perspective on the subject, her bias, what were other relevant questions. These were all valid thoughts, I just have do learn to focus them. So I will just write several questions down on the paper, and go back and answer them later, or not. Sometimes just thinking through that logical process I come to a new revelation about the topic and I realize my original perspective was warped or not on topic. My initial questions were not failures, they helped to guide me to the more relevant topic. It is all about failing towards success. But how can you allow a child to do this? Still working on that idea.
-A channel for off topic ideas.
I get some of my best revelations while I am trying to do something else. So what I do now is to keep a journal with me basically every where I go, and write down random ideas, words I like, things I want to do when I am 60, whatever. This has helped to focus my ideas, and to utilize the creativity that is pent up in my brain. As I drive I have a tape recorder in my car that I can talk to and capture my ideas. Now I have yet to go through and document those, but nevertheless they are there for me when I have a dry moment of inspiration to draw from.
-Physical release of energy
I have a hard time sitting in one place for very long. Despite this I spend up to 6 hours in coffee shops every day studying, reading books, hanging out. I bring juggling balls with me, my unicycle, toys I call them. If I am very creative, I will need to take an energy break more often, but sometimes I will just go out side and walk around for a little to release some energy. Also by being in the coffee shop environment I get constant visual input and small breaks from what I am doing. These small breaks help me to refocus on what I was doing.

Well I am reaching my max for sitting here, and I have even taken several breaks, will write a several more editions to this though, and It is kind of an ongoing thing learning what works, what doesn't, and all that stuff.

What is genius

 
This is not expert opinion, just me thinking out loud.

It is impossible to see everything that is happening around you at once. It is also impossible to interpret all of the signals that we receive in sensory input, like what we are seeing, hearing, smelling... Examples of abilities associated with interpreting signals are that some people are able to read others responses like a book, others can play chess really well, still more can apply their huge database of knowledge to the appropriate situation at any given time.
For an extreme example of this, think of the movie Rain man. Dustin Hoffman's character was not able to interpret the social situations that they encountered, yet he was a "genius" at numbers. But not at every aspect of numbers, at memorizing numbers, and at doing arithmetic with them. Point covered, on to the idea.
What is this "genius" ability? I think there are many different abilities, and some of them combined together form a strategy for comprehending the world. Lets make some assertions, then see which prove out.

-one person can not have every ability.

-If your ability is to focus in on one ability, you lose out on the opportunity to have it's opposite.
(If you don't agree with me yet, see where we go, hold on for a little and try me)

-These abilities combine to form a strategy unique to that individual, but through different strategies can come to similar results, with differing successes in speed, and accuracy.

and the last assertion (no drum roll please)
-Being a really realy good genius ( not evil or anything) comes from having the ability to instantly and continually decide if the ability you are using or focusing on is the one needed for the situation.

I will edit this to actually talk about it when I am not so tired.

Learn how to succeed through Failure

To preface this, it is not my own idea. I have read many books, and I got it from one, but now that I have applied the philosophy to my life, I have incorporated it in new ways.

The learning process is really about error correction. However it is not about reduction of errors, or trying not to make very many, learning something well can be about making as many error's as possible in the beginning. I will now use an example. There was a game called dance dance revolution. People walking by it in an arcade were drawn to the flashing lights and dance pad on the ground, wondering in amazement how it worked. Then an expert would walk up and make it all look so easy that no one else would want to try it.

The first time I did it, I knew I would look funny doing it, and that I probably would not be able to do anything about it. So I tried tons of different songs, watched others do it, and would hopelessly abandon all sense of coolness in my attempts to get my feet where the screen told me they should be. (as I am writing this, I am noticing the lack of point, or maybe meandering through it, will try to fix). So for the next several times, I tried to discover what I was having a problem with, and what I was already good at doing. Sometimes what I was good at doing would lead me into one of the things that I was awful at. But in the beginning there can be so many things that you are not doing well that you don't know where to improve or how.

The Point. Pick one thing, and get better at it. No one can improve in every area at the same time. Become aware of what is failing and what is working, and be willing to be bad at many things until you figure out what it will take. I think I noticed this most dramatically with the unicycle. I would say there were around 15 leaps of understanding that I had to go through to be able to ride it more than a few inches. Until I could do each of these, and be at least somewhat aware of them, I was not going to be able to ride it.

So my philosophy in riding the unicycle was, fail at as many things as possible, in order to discover what I was going to have to learn how to do. After those initial sessions, I could look for small areas where I was improving, even if they were subtle. I could have learned half of the things to get better at the unicycle the first day, and I still would not be able to ride it. So for a large learning curve like that, it takes just failing for a while, and for the unicycle quite a while.

Then one day, you don't feel like you have improved in the least since you got the darn thing(going from one inch to ten inches does not really count). All of a sudden, you do it for a good distance, everything just falls into place.

(So far, all of this was just cursory info that came to my head as I was thinking about what I was really wanting to say. And as an aside, I am speaking on the main idea at my Toastmasters group this Tuesday, in 2 days)((Alternate title: How to kill two birds with one stone, write about what you are thinking about for a blog, then speak on that topic in your public speaking group. Ha ha ha, I will include that advice in my book on how to take over the world)

Now what I was going to be talking about. The 1 % success rate. This is also not my idea, read it in a book a while ago. If you improve in something by 1 %, anything at all, after a year with compounding interest you will be 1000% better or more. So here is my take on this. I am energized by having new ideas and thoughts in my head. I was interested in cryptography recently for about 3 days, then something else caught my interest. I don't mind jumping around as long as I know that I will come back to this later at some point and learn more about it, or get better at it. In fact, sometimes just having these ideas not completed is exciting because I can take the concepts I did learn about in that brief time further. Then when I go back to the cryptography, I have context to put the information in, as well I have thought about it at random times for a while.

Another way to apply this philosophy would be to think about having a core set of competencies that you want to be able to do. I like to improve myself through reading, improving my motor skills through learning new manual skills like juggling or unicycling, learning how to improve my memory, many others. So lets say there are 10 of these things that can be relaxing and may or may not help me in the future. I go in cycles of doing some of these things and completely neglecting others. Lets break it down

I probably have a top three that I am always doing one of these. If it is juggling, I have all of that stuff in my car, and may always carry three balls around with me wherever I go. I may do this for an average of 20min a day, in between this class, during my break at work. I have the other 7 things that I do occasionally, like origami, where I keep some paper handy in my room or in my backpack, when I get the urge I will do it for a few days, then not do it again for 2 weeks.

At the moment I can only do 3 models of origami. You could call me a failure at origami. I learn one new model a month, if that. And soon It may drop off the radar screen as other things push it out of the way. But one day I will pick it back up, and It might be on the top of the list, in which case I will work on it in a creative frenzy learning two or three figures a day for several weeks.

I guess you could call this the 5min a day principal. Anything you want to learn, if you were to put in a little bit of time towards it every day, at the end of a year, you could be awesome at it. The other point I see in this, is that you could do several of these things, and let a natural flow develop as to which one is more interesting at the moment. This is a very exciting way to go about the day.

Everyone stands in lines, has to sit at stop lights, or wait for a meeting to happen. What could you learn while this was happening?

This question alone is exciting to me, almost blowing my mind. It conjures ideas like what are the limits of human potential? What would be possible if a person continued to get better at an increasing number of things through out their whole life?

Perfection is only attainable within Perfection

So I haven't posted in a while, because I was worried about formulating my ideas more clearly, aswell as making sure I made sense. Well it is a good idea to make sense, but I think seeing the process unfold can be a beneficial thing aswell. There is something to be said of keeping the aesthetic beauty of something intact by leaving some of it's original form in place. I am speaking of my writing style in this instance.

I am in a summer school art class at the moment, and it is so liberating and exciting. This class has added a filter of perception to my brain, that as I go about my normal things, I am seeing the world through a whole new set of eyes. I still have all of my old biases, but this is now an added one that plays with all of the others. (see right now I realize that my subject is a little fuzzy, aswell as my meaning, will try to clear this up). It is like when you read a book, you could look at it from the historical perspective, a feministic perspective, why did the author write it, so many ways. So I call these the filters through which we see the world. ( see I am bringing it back, slowly I know). Each of these gives context to the book, and allow us to experience it on a deeper level.

Well this filter of perception that is true for books, is also true for our interaction with others. All of this is covered in philosophy, so I won't delve into it too deeply, but it has major relevance. As I meet new people, many of these filters come to my head, and I question which ones apply to the current situation, and which are irrelevant. This ability to decide on appropriateness of these ideas is a factor of intelligence, but so is the ability to have many filters. (aha, another subject to discuss in a later blog, the idea of multiple intelligences, and what I believe are some of the factors). So what happens when, upon meeting a new person, wondering what their background is, where did that accent come from, how much of what you say do they understand based off of your analysis of their education level? These are all good ideas, but with too many of them, they become overwhelming, especially when people accidentally give off false clues, maybe use a high register word that is not normally a part of their vocabulary ( and here I could go off on all the false clues I have seen, or just misconceptions I had based upon a first impression.)

I have said how these multiple filters can be a negative in light of meeting a new person and trying to fit them into your understanding. But the process of allowing your mind to wander through so many ideas, and come to random conclusions can also be a good thing. For one, once it is refined, can allow for very deep insights without a lot of information, case in point, Sherlock Holmes. All of his assumptions always seemed to turn out right, but as I work at Starbucks and see inordinate amounts of people walk through the door, there is much information that can be gained from appearances. What I have learned from experience is how much weight to give to these. Everyone has inconsistencies in their lives. My room might be a mess while my car is spotless. Granted, this extreme is rare, but people are always in the process of changing and growing, and they do not grow at the same rate in every area ( this has been a recent acknowledgement for me, and a great relief to the personal internal inconsistencies I saw in myself. I can now realize that these are a part of the human condition).

Let me summarize what we have up to now, so we can go further. So we have perceptions through which we see the world, these allow us to put context to our experiences and interactions with others, and allow us to instantly gather a great deal of information about the other person, but we have to further the relationship to see how much of this initial information truly describes the person. There are many good and bad things about this way we see other people, but that is what happens. So on to my point. With adhd, these filters come pouring into my brain, without the ability to decide which are more relevant than others. Or if I chose to try to decide which are more important, I become overwhelmed with competing ideas and the degree of relevance each has in comparison to the other. You could call this getting caught up in the process without regard to the results. I have learned how to continually think about, why was I trying to do this, what was the point of this thinking process. By continually analyzing this, I am able to have a wide variety of ideas and still narrow them down into a cohesive idea or result.

An interesting by product of these multiple filters of perception and random associations, is the ability of memory. Because any experience, like meeting someone with an accent, has this huge database of ideas and thought experience surrounding the event. So I do not only have the one experience of meeting this person with an accent, I have what I was thinking about, the free associations and Ideas that were swirling around in my brain, aswell as the strange Sherlock like conclusions that my brain came to. Now these ideas my not be relevant to the interaction, but they serve to preserve it in my brain. If someone mentions accents and asks if I ever met someone with a strange one, I can recall a large portion of my meeting because of the volumes of information I associated with that meeting. I might remember what they were wearing, what we talked about, or more likely the ideas that came to my head as a result of meeting them. So learning how to control this process, or at least use it to your advantage could be a very helpful thing.

The premise behind Learning

Does everyone have ADHD? Is the number of cases of people with ADHD going up? These questions came from an interesting conversation I had with a Starbucks partner yesterday In the Ina and LaCholla Starbucks.

As we talked I was able to articulate some of the ideas that I have been pondering for quite a while. To begin to answer these questions I will first use an analogy to describe the process that I believe happens in normal people, and then what it would be like from the eyes of someone with ADHD. You will notice the similarities and the differences between them, then I will use those to explain further if everyone does in fact have ADHD.

So a lawyer reads a new law for the first time. As he reads it he is using the left, logical side of his brain to interpret the meaning behind the law. The left side of his brain will begin to analyze the words and what they individually mean, then put them together in a corporate context to begin to understand what their use collectively means as a whole. Now a good lawyer will begin to use his right hemisphere, or creative side and allow his mind to wander through different cenario and applications that he might use this new law. He might wonder why this law was enacted as a clue to how to use it, what loopholes this new law creates, any number of paradigm's concerning the laws application, interpretation, or it's ambiguity. If he were introduced to this new law in a meeting, it would be quite distracting for him to have to do this and not pay attention to how the meeting was proceeding. My point with this is that the good lawyer know the balance of how much he can allow himself to think about this subject according to the appropriateness of the situation.

I will explain cycle rates, and then we will look at this same cenario with the creative knob turned up.

Cycle rate? What is that? This is a way of thinking about the balance between being logical, being creative, or simply being aware of stimulus. For a "normal" person, they look at a problem, and slowly look at it from different angles. They may read the law, and think of another law that it reminds them of. This would be the personal filter of past experience. Then once they have gone down that path for a while, and may or may not have given them any new revelation to the new law, they look at the law analyticity, is the law clearly stated or is it hazy or ambiguous. There are tons of these different perspectives that they could look at the law from, some more relevant, some less relevant. You could say they cycled through different filters that they had, to see which would apply or where appropriate.

Now lets turn the cycle rate up. As this person starts to think of the past experience of the law, before they have finished, they start looking at the wording of the new law, then they realize the old law was worded a little funky, well gee there was this one law that was really funky in wording, but that came about because of the amount of people working on the law. Maybe this new law had too many people giving input to it, Man my sock is really bothering me, maybe those people who wrote the law had socks that bothered them too, or their room was dimly lit like mine. Who, where did that come from? When the cycle rate for going through personal filters, the current stimulus is sometimes more pressing in the mind that what one was thinking about, but this could flip also. If they are driving and the physical stimulus of driving is what is important, and driving by an old building with interesting architecture passes, the driver could start thinking about architects, what kind of schooling they must go through, all that crazy math. Speaking of math, I wonder what my instantaneous velocity is at this moment, am I speeding up at an increasing rate, or am I accelerating at a constant rate? Ok, sorry to do that to you, I know it can get confusing to be thrown down random paths like that.

But what did we learn from this? "Normal" people have the same brain process as ADHD people. In fact, this ability to connect past events to our lives to help us interpret present information is vital. So is the ability to see different perspectives when approaching a problem. These are considers good skills to have. The problem arises when these skills are taken slightly farther than necessary. This cycling through logical, then creative, then sensory impute, is handy and troublesome. I would like to talk about this at some length later on, but feel it would draw me away from my topic.

As I have learned, must continue on the topic. So what were we talking about? Aha yes, everyone has this ability to cycle through different inputs, both physical and mental, and in the mental, from both sides of the brain. I will give some examples of where this is very good, and let you think about these taken to the extreme.

A good salesman has the ability to look at the customers objections from their perspective and overcome them in a way adequate to that customer. What if you looked at situations from other peoples perspective too often? Especially without ever knowing if you were able to actually see it from their perspective?

Lawyers look at the ambiguity of language to find multiple meanings in the laws, aswell as the testimony of witnesses, or even contractual agreements. What if you herd the multiple interpretations of what everyone said? And not necessarily all the time, but that was one of the things your brain cycled through?

A good chess player is able to look at tons and tons of lines of strategy to see which ones work better, but take this skill out of context and apply it to social situations, or simply a question someone asks you. This skill being a positive one in the chess setting, suddenly becomes a weakness when applied to situations where quick decisions and assessing of the situation is a must.

I will sum up what conclusions I make from all of this. ADHD is simply the natural creative ability that we all posses, simply taken to a higher thinking cycle rate. It is not even thinking faster, is is just more jumping around. And even this skill is beneficial applied to some concepts. Another way I can put the cycle rate, is that the subconscious thoughts are continually interrupting what I am consciously doing. A different perspective on this, is that the natural feedback loop in my mind is like low volume elevator music, you only hear it when it stops or something really interesting comes up. But for me the volume is turned up a little more, so I hear the thought process of my subconscious continually working, and this can be distracting. One last analogy for this. As I was talking to the Starbucks partner, she herd the incorrect grammar that she had said, and immediately corrected it. This is the internal subconscious listing to what she said and alerting her to the incorrect grammar. So we all have this subconscious voice filtering information, it is just a little louder in ADHD, but in some cases it can be much louder.

I think there was good information here. Again as usual, any comments are appreciated. If you have any other ways of thinking about these, let me know, or if there was something not quite as clear, I would love to know how to express these ideas better. The only thing not very beneficial is criticism without a way to fix it.

What is ADD/ADHD

As a disclamer, this is what my experience along with many conversations with other people that have ADHD. This is by no means comprehensive, nor are the ideas taken from somewhere else, they are an amalgamation of experiences up to this point.

What is ADHD/ADD

This is a tough question because I believe that ADHD is simply a normal trait that everyone posesses (creativity) taken to an extreme in some individuals. The degree to what extreeme this is taken is what creates the grey area, how much of this abundance must a person have to be classified as having ADHD. For my purposes I will state the extreemes of a given atribute, and let thee reader decide.

For me ADHD, is a blessing and a slight nusance. A blessing, in that I have a continual flood of ideas, inspiration and perspectives from which to draw on at any time. It can be a nusance in that I am always jumping from one idea to another, or have a hard time being consistent with most things on a daily basis.

Let's use some analogies. Imagine with me for a moment, a novelist writing a book on a typwriter. Sitting in a dimly lit room at 3:00 in the afternooon. The bed is unmade, with the room tidy but unorginized. Maby a hotell room or a sparse apartment. She is sitting at a small table trying to think of the complexities of her story. At any given time she must attain a balance between getting ideas, and writing them down. The process of typing down the ideas stunts her ability to think of more, while the more deeply she thinks about the story, the less she writes about it.

Where is her ispiration comming from? Is the inspiration a part of her will that she can force to happen? Or does it come in fits and starts and random times and from random places? She glances over at the disheveled bed and realizes her main charicter is not as one dimensional as she realized. Deep in his ethos is a part that longs for the freedom of spontenaity amongst his strictly regimented lifestyle. This thought came from her surooundings. It was the stimulos of her eyes applied to the thoughts going on in her head.

This is an example of a "normal" person using her creativity. Now imagine she has ADHD. She is sitting at the table, looking around the room for inspiration. lets do internal dialogue here "wow my room is a mess, look at the bed, all messy, I wonder why material my sheets are made of, I have herd egyptian cotton is nice, do they use sheets in egypt, why did the sphynxes nose fall off, my character should have a protruding nose, yess that is good. Then she starts to type, " Wow this old keyboard is weird, listening to the beat of the keys I am pounding I can make a rhythm, or even morese code. That's cool." And with each new idea a whole new stream is born. With one idea comes the whole mental shift of thinking about that idea to it's extreem, but that never comes, because as she takes that idea very far, more intriguing ideas come to mind.

I think this story illistrates the way the creative process when taken to an extreeme throws off the balace of being able to produce what one is thinkinng about. Creativity is only good if it produces something, but with ADHD the wonderment of the process hampers the ability to produce a work.

Let's do another anologie.

A man is at a party where he only knows the person that brought him. His firend wanders off and he is left to fend for himself. He begins a conversation with an attractive girl, which carries on for 10 min. Then they are interupted and somehow get separated and do not see each other again.

Now put yourself in this man's shoes. What is going through his head as he talks to the girl? "Man, I wonder if she likes me, is she intrested, does she have a boyfirend?" These are questions anyone would think about, somewhat surface level. Lets turn up the creativity knob. What was her up bringing, did you notice the southern accent, is she a natural blond, wow look at her nails, well manicured, her outfit matches well and seams to fit with her personality, aswell as matching the time of day, the season, and the general ambiance of the party. Did she just look away because she was bored, or looking for a more exciting conversation, or hoping one of her friends noticed the attractive guy she was talking too?

This train of thought is still pretty focused even though it shows the natural tendency to analyze the situation, and second guess what is really happening.

Another train exebited by overactive creativity, is the awarness of signals put off by others, and by yourself. But without focus or discipline, these run rampant without having the ability to measure the validity of each signal in turn.

So we will trun the creativity knob up full blast and see what happens.

Lets do the internal dialogue of the man again. "Man I wore the wrong shoes, they are a little uncomfortable, hey that hot chick is comming closer, intresting accent" he says to her"Excuse me, I noticed a slight accent, are you from the south?" bla bla bla.... he sees the fingernails well manicured and wonders how recently they were done, maby she is high maintinence and only likes to go to nice restraunts, dosen't enjoy the simpler things of life, wow these shoes are uncomfortable better shift my weight, oo no, I think she noticed that, she might think I am anxious to leave, but i just want to get to know her better, I wonder what kind of car she drives, I like bigger cars I fit into them better."

Not sure if this example illustrates it well but I will have to refine the core idea more. By the way, as my internal dialogue is going, if any readers of this have comments about how relivant each of these examples are, just post a comment. Or even better, if you have a good analogie to share, please do so, I appreciate the imput. None of these ideas are set in concrete, and I think each individual exibits these traits through their personality and individuality. I am looking for commonalities, and the deeper meaning of why we have this dialogue or self doubt, and how we can channel it into being productive, or deep thinking.

More to come later.

Talking Passionately about Something

Talking Passionately about Something
Originally uploaded by Coffee Master.

Childhood Memories

What was it like for me in school?
I remember one time in math class, there were 5 or 6 of us kids sitting around another student who would hold up flash cards of multiplication, and we had to blurt out the answer before anyone else. I don't think I got one of the cards first, or second, or third. I think that was the first time I recall thinking about my thinking process, and why it was different from the other students.
Why did it take me a while to process these new math concepts? This is now a theme that has driven my thinking since that point. When I looked at the numbers, I questioned their overall relation to each other, not only the predefined question we were supposed to be answering. I was having a hard time limiting my mind to the constraints the class was putting on me. It took me quite a while of thinking about why 5 and 6 where so similar, one number off, yet different. One was even, one was odd, 6 is a perfect number, having the same numbers, 1 2 and 3 that when added equal it, and when multiplied equal it as well. I had to let my mind wander through some of these concepts before it would settle down on the concept I needed to learn.
One thing that always frustrated me in math, was that I always wanted to know what the other buttons on the calculator did, but no one could explain it to me conceptually. In fact, their inability to do so, led me to believe that most people did not really understand what was going on with these higher functions. It has only been recently that I have been intrigued once again to some of the oddities of numbers that I was presented with back in the day.
School was quite frustrating back then. I did not yet have the ability to explain things in a cohesive manner. I would start talking and my subconscious would interrupt me with wonderful ideas, and I would start talking about those, or simply stare off in wonderment of these ideas that I could not yet explain or focus down into an intelligible level. Thankfully my mom home schooled me for the first three years, so she was able to encourage my creativity while still honing my inability to focus on one idea.


For the record, I am learning html so as to publish a website that will cover many ideas that are foundational to what I want to say. As I write this post, I am realizing I have not defined what ADHD is like for me, how I have overcome the obstacles while maintaining the positive attributes. Tons of things I would like people to know about. This is the frustrating thing about ADHD, I see many things at once, and can't decide which should come first. Just for fun, here is what I mean
-ADHD as a child
-Why I am glad I took ritilan for a short time, but also hate it.
-What ADHD is like in different situations
(must go off on this one)
-Driving
-Thrift Stores
-Reading Books
-The classroom
-Sitting in Starbucks
-Why brief respites of focused attention help to refocus attention
(This is the point at which I realize my stream of consciousness could go on forever, but where I also see it segwaying into several more subtopics, or back to my original point. I guess I will take it back to the original point, but that is not quite as much fun, I guess I will have more fun later, I will take you on a real ADHD trip... ha, ha, ha.)
So what am I doing about all of these ideas. I am slowly but surely working on writing a book about learning and ADHD, I keep journals that are highly unstructured but through natural selection of random ideas are becoming more structured, and this list could go on for quite a while as well. I hope this blog will forum for people to ask questions, give feedback on these ideas, as well as helping me refine my ideas to further help other people like me. We shall see where these ideas take us. My next post will have to deal with some of what I experience with ADHD, hopefully broad enough to encompass the aforementioned specific examples.

Mark and his philosophy of life

duckbill
Originally uploaded by Coffee Master.

Mark recently moved back to California, but he was here long enough to share some wonderful conversations.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step

I am very happy to start writing this. I have begun to write a book about my experiences on having ADHD or as I prefer to call it, dual brained. My intent is to use this blog to be a place where others can read about my experiences and learn about themselves or others they know who are dual brained. I am researching learning, the process of it from my experience as well as published and scholarly works. I also hope to learn from the feedback I get concerning the articles I write, and a sifting of ideas from the broad range of experiences of many people, to ensure that my experiences are not isolated.

I think this blog will also serve as a way for people I know to keep abreast of what I am up to, what new things I am learning, and new inspiration that can help me in my search for a deeper understanding as to the underlying principals behind nature and life (I know, I know, my english teacher would tell me this sentence is a tad to long, but it exemplifies the thought process of my brain, and will give a peek into the flow of ideas in my mind).

I am thankfull for this ability to express myself, and for the hope of helping others like me. May I be clear in expression, yet not lose my voice. May I be general enough for undestanding, yet specific enough for relivance. These statements will become clear later, delving into the deep waters of my thought process.