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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

I've long fantasized what the story of "Grog, the hunter-gatherer with ADHD" would look like. It's... not pretty.

- Stepping on a branch while hunting because of a fractal pattern in the nearby tree.

- Get drop-kicked by a puma because they spent too much time looking at the ground while trying not to break a branch while hunting.

- Getting distracted and missing their ability to ambush prey.

- Their spear breaking because of a lack of maintenance.

- Spending weeks trying to improve their spear and forgetting to eat/sleep/drink regularly.

- Poisoning themselves/another because they started glossing over the details while picking mushrooms.

Control over concentration has never been solely a modern day requirement.

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I think this is a misclassification of ADHD. Well at least mine. I tend to notice everything and be aware of everything with very little tunnel vision and I think it would work to my advantage if, and humongous if, I also didn't have a fear of any flying insect because I can't tune them out. Almost everything you seem to be describing is a tunnel vision. And almost everything you're describing there is something that I see neurotypical people have issues with that I have to redirect them until them to focus on things that I should have trouble focusing on. But again that's maybe me because I was diagnosed really early and I as a survival mechanism overcompensated my focus in a way because throughout my entire life everyone was telling me I wasn't paying attention when I clearly was so I had to prove it to everyone that I was paying attention to everything all the time.

Also my spear would be really well maintained and that is because I'm trying to improve it when I know there is nothing around and I would want to be ready for when there is a puma around and I would also be excited to try to want to test it to see if the improvements I made on the spear were actually improvements. Lol

I don't know if that would match up with reality. I know several people who have ADHD and are hunters. They seem to find it very easy to focus on the hunt and all of the associated preparation and activities.

Not hunting, but it matches my experience with wildlife photography. I can spend hours carefully stalking animals because it feeds my dopamine imbalance. My distractions aren't random, because my brain is primed to respond to specific sounds and movements in my environment. Compare that to a sterile office where my mind wanders because that stimulation can't be found anywhere.

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