Lex Fridman: preference

Transcript context

…Well, there’s a lot of things that ADHD affects and so I’ll start with some of the easiest things, because there’s directly applicable, then these kind of collateral damage applicable things that happen. So one thing that has really helped me with ADHD is maturity. I think that’s just a thing that everyone needs more of. Meaning that I found myself getting so wiggly and so out of control when I would try to sit down and read, and I just couldn’t handle it. I just felt like I’d read a page and didn’t read anything. The part of me that just went, “Oh man, gosh, I just can’t even do this.” I had to just simply quit listening to it and said, “Nope, I’m rereading this page.” I remember reading some pages in college like 18 times in a row, just like I’m going to force myself to just do this the correct way. And so there’s an aspect of maturity that really helps, no matter what, I will do the thing I’m going to do and I’m going to do it well and maybe it takes me a lot longer and that’s okay. That’s not the point of it. It’s that I’m doing it and that’s the point. And so that’s one thing that I think just generally helps. And ADHD, no ADHD, the resilience, emotional resilience is just a really important aspect that just helps. And so I think that has been a large part that really helps me. There’s things that I still obviously struggle with. It’s clear where I’m really bad at stuff, and just trying to think through all the different things that I’m bad at. There’s more things I’m bad at than I’m good at. And so programming obviously has something that just allows me to remain focused and it’s like a strength of mine. And so I started off where I could just do it for a little bit and then just through kind of that emotional resilience, I was able to start doing it more and more. And so now I can just do it for like 10, 12, 15 hours at a time and I absolutely love it. And so it’s become kind of like a joy. It’s like playing a musical instrument. I’m really into it. But then if it came down to, “Hey, you need to go schedule your own dentistry and go do all these other things or make sure the kids have this type of stuff ready for the meals you need to pack throughout the week.” I’m historically very bad at that and will probably continue to be very bad at that. And so I must say that one of the reasons why I excel so much is because I also have a wife who is so good to me and she helps clear out a lot of the things in my life that cause a lot of me kind of getting snowballed into a weird spot where I’m just distracted getting nothing done. And so she’s really helped me. So it would be foolish of me to claim that I’ve defeated the ADHD by myself, but instead I find that the places that I can really control I’ve done a very good job at, and the things that I obviously need to do much better at, my wife has helped me a whole bunch. And so I’ve kind of cheated. Maybe I found a cheat code, a loving wife. But that has been the thing that has really helped. You said a lot of interesting things. So on the reading and for me it’s also audiobook side, I do the same thing and I’ve gotten much better at it, which is I tune out mentally and I read a page and you don’t understand anything on the page. You didn’t actually read it. And yeah, I forced myself to just reread it or re-listen to an audiobook, which is a much more common problem for me now, and forcing myself to really pay attention. Because I listen to audiobooks often when I run and it’s so easy to just tune out. It’s a skill. I didn’t realize how much of a skill listening to an audiobook is, especially when there’s other sensory inputs when you run. So I have to force myself to really pay attention to every single word. And if I don’t, like tune out and don’t remember what I just listened to in the past 30 seconds, I force myself to re-listen to it. And sometimes that means five times until, it’s like punishing myself to like, “You’re going to listen to this boring shit over and over until you get good at that little skill of like zoom in.” And you’re like, yeah, there’s people, they’re doing stuff, there’s nature, it doesn’t matter… Yeah, there’s people, they’re like doing stuff, there’s nature, it doesn’t matter. You’re listening to every single word and loading it in and trying to stay focused, even there’s just so many distractions all around you. Yeah. It’s definitely a learned skill and it takes a lot of time. And when I say, “Oh, I was able to do from here to here,” I’m speaking over the course of like five years of doing this every day. It’s not some small… There’s no… The nice part about that decision though is you can make that decision today. You can make it right now. You’re going to be like, “From here on out, I’ll never make that mistake again. I will say I’m going to read 50 pages, I will sit down and read 50 pages, and when I get distracted I’ll go back to the last place I remember and I’ll start again.” And like that’s a decision you can make. That’s a mature, non-emotional decision to make. And you can do that, it just may be really painful for the first couple years of making said decisions. And then it gets easier and then it gets easier, and then it becomes more natural to change yourself.…

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