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Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

> We can't do that when we're awake

I started using a timer about ten years ago for mundane tasks (getting done a chunk of unpleasant work, or for cooking) and these days I'll get up from my desk to go check on the oven right before the timer rings.

It works regardless of the length of the timer, and even when I don't know exactly how many minutes it is (twisty analog oven dial).

I don't consciously know how much time is left, but somehow I do know when "it's time."

Haven't tested this on longer timescales (hours) though, but I did meet a guy who said he always knew what time it was because he used to work for a TV station doing the countdown til they go on air.

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I have the exact opposite sense of time. I'm frequently several minutes late to meetings because I've completely lost track of time. I'm very cue-dependent, and with this everything-at-home lifestyle we've transitioned to, I often have split-second confusion that I'm just having lunch in the middle of the day and have to go back to work in a minute and not go take a shower like it's after dinner.

If you haven't before, consider looking into whether or not you might have ADHD.

I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid and took Ritalin for a little while, but hated it so I convinced my parents to let me stop. I haven't sought medication or treatment since then. I can manage it really well if I'm intentional about how I arrange and use my environment, and it usually seems like the bursts of intense focus and creativity compensate for the tendency to be distracted and chasing multiple concurrent threads. Granted, I need a manager and work environment that indulges my need to deep dive on something without a lot of structure occasionally. Losing those bursts and everything becoming kind of gray scale is why I hated taking the meds as a kid.

It's a long conversation and hard to have here/in-comments, but I'd encourage you to look into it again, for several reasons. I get the focus/creativity aspect for sure!

1. Medications have come a long way, and there's more than just Ritalin (or Adderall) as options. I get the grey scale concept, but I don't think it has to be that way. There are varying doses and varying medications, and you might find something that is almost all upside with (possibly) no downside.

2. You might perceive yourself to be managing / coping fine (and you might be, I don't mean that in any disrespectful way!) but there could be vast undiscovered focus abilities you could access. For me personally, the difference on and off medication is VAST.

3. You might not always have that manager/environment. Or (what happened for me) someday you might (already) have a family, and fewer options for those bursts of focus. I used to work until 3am when I was on a roll, but now I can't.

4. The distraction / multiple threads stuff can have other impacts on your own self-image. Depends on how well it's managed I guess, in the world and inside your head.

Good luck! :)

Tbh you just gotta find something you love doing and the rest will resolve itself

Don't let society dictate how your brain should function.

You are fine and valid the way you are, and don't let anyone call you a disorder.

ADHD and Autism are "spectrum" disorders. Meaning that in a sense, we ALL have them to varying degrees, on a spectrum. (For example, we can all be distractable..)

The definition of a disorder is that it's interfering with your life. So, if it's not bothering you, ALL GOOD. :) You don't have a disorder.

I appreciate that you're well-intentioned. And of course if someone is happy exactly as they are, that's awesomesauce!

But to the degree someone expresses that they struggle with something, and they might benefit from learning more or exploring options, it's not wrong to gently and respectfully encourage them to explore learning/options.

It doesn't mean someone is "calling them" something.

Yeah, that's the narrative I fed myself since I was a teenager, and I had plenty of validation for it from family members that loved me. I was just "too smart" to sit in class bored all day or whatever. I'm trying to question that narrative. The burst of focus and creativity might be great, but I wonder if the sibling commenter is right that I could be missing out on vast, untapped potential and I might not lose the upside. I don't know.

> I was just "too smart" to sit in class bored all day or whatever.

Yes, you WERE too smart to be forced to sit around and learn at a pace that was way too slow for you.

Imagine how much you could have learned if you were progressing at your own pace (let's say top 10%) rather than school curriculum pace (let's say tuned for 90% of students to keep up)

Think about how much more successful you could have been in programming if you had learned calculus by 8th grade, a task I'd say at least half our U.S population is capable of.

Instead, you are forced to put up with the same spoonfeeding as everyone else, and if you don't like it, you have a disorder?

You were rightfully frustrated and upset at this waste of your time. Not to mention how unnatural and unhealthy it is to sit in place for hours at a time.

It's not a disorder, it's a natural response to reality.

> if you had learned calculus by 8th grade

Joke's on you. I still haven't learned calculus.

I have a very similar experience of time, and have only now late life gotten some insight in to my past struggles with a ADHD diagnosis.

Worth looking in to foooor sure.

I'd love to hear more. I've definitely lived with the downsides, but my experience with medicating for it as pre-teen was so negative that I have been extremely reticent to seek treatment since.

First off I’d say that medicating as an adult is an entirely different experience than as a child (I have children, but was not medicated as a child, so YMMV) mainly because you can almost immediately tell the difference and you have the language necessary to properly discuss pros/cons/adjustments with your doctor.

As well, we now know that like hormonal birth control there’s no one pill that’s right for everyone so it’s awesome to have people be open to the adjustment process.

From a life perspective, even without medication it’s been extremely helpful for me to see (for example) my lateness for what it mostly is: my brain is driven by the desire to be fully engaged. In the past I have been late not only because I forgot (which is easy(ish) to deal with by sticking to the calendar), but because in the “dead” time before a timed event I am driven to fill it with things I used to deem “worthwhile”, and would focus intently to turn up the engagement (obviously) thus lose track of time and suddenly find myself in a time crunch. Anything from “just a quick level” of a fast-paced fps, fast racing game, or sparkly new mobile game to picking up a sidelined woodworking project or (more often honestly) grabbing a work-task off the todo list.

And, I will say that it feels great to be fully engaged and “firing on all cylinders” (I’m really enjoying Space Pirate Trainer on quest this month), but in the past where I would say subconsciously to myself “This is what I’m made for!” and push other things aside, now I can recognize the drive to what’s unique or engaging as being just about those two things, and I can properly choose what my priorities are.

There's more to treatment than just medication. A good therapist specializing in ADHD will help you figure out how to build habits and processes to cope.

Also an interesting point: I’m also very cue-dependant. I’ve spent most of my life structuring my tasks and habits around cues. It is tricky as heck as I’m sure you know. This too can be an indication of ADHD as the ADHD brain is more likely to be really good with connections between things.

Yeah, I find myself encouraging others to explore this stuff until it's fully resolved in your mind, because of the difference it's made in my life and in others I've seen personally.

I've had both of the experiences described in this thread, and I believe the key is whether you genuinely want to do the thing at the time.

If you actually want to wake up at the prescribed time, you can do it. If you think you SHOULD wake up at the time, no dice.

If you have 27 minutes of working on something you want to work on before a time limit for something else you want to do, you'll know. If you have a time limit before something you "should" do? no dice.

There is quite a bit of stuff in life that works this way, and it was shocking to me how often I've confused what I "should" want with what I actually want.

If someone asks me the time I'll often respond without looking "about 2.30". Then after digging out my phone check and see it's actually "2.35".

Your perception of time is off, you are perceiving time to be passing slower than it actually is. Right now it only seems like 5 minutes, but over time these error minutes will accumulate and you will feel like you have lived less life than you actually have lived in real time.

If you did not know how old you were, one day you might be asked to guess, and think you are 63, but then be told the truth and come to the chilling realization you are actually 82 and near death. That is the danger of lagging time perception.

What form of satire could this be?

Why is this down voted? It's obviously a joke (and reasonably funny too)...

Around here words must not be structured in such a way that it might elicit some residual feelings of joy. When detected they must be thoroughly eradicated.

Still, some individuals endure the risk of ostracization by carefully camouflaging such payloads to avoid detection. Often they still fail, as the detection systems become more fit through continuous training data and unsupervised learning.

People here take this website Very Seriously ™

Is this Poe's Law?

I worked in the culinary world for a long time and we called this our “oh shit!” timer — being caught up in some task to suddenly remember to open the oven at the perfect moment before something burns.

This happens a lot in hospitality. Most chefs I know (myself included), set a timer, then go back to the job just before the timer goes off.

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