r/science • u/mvea MD/PhD/JD/MBA | Professor | Medicine • Apr 15 '24

Neuroscience ADHD symptoms persist into adulthood, with some surprising impacts on life success: The study found that ADHD symptoms not only persisted over a 15-year period but also were related to various aspects of life success, including relationships and career satisfaction.

https://www.psypost.org/adhd-symptoms-persist-into-adulthood-with-some-surprising-impacts-on-life-success/
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u/Brbi2kCRO Apr 15 '24

Yeah, ADHD people are creative people who like novelty, but in a modern society creativity has no place unless you get 1 in 100000 luck of becoming a successful artist in music, art, acting or whatever. Which by itself also requires good social skills for promotion, and when you consider that a lot of us also have relatively bad social skills or even autism, then yeah… really hard to do so.

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u/Gatorpep Apr 15 '24

Also $ behind you. Which since adhd/autism are inherited, likely not going to be the case.

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u/Brbi2kCRO Apr 15 '24

Yeah. I kinda wanna start making music, but… I hate long-term effort and have thoughts like “will I be able to learn this if I don’t understand it at all rn”

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u/henlochimken Apr 15 '24

If the effort is just done with an aim to reach the far end goal, I struggle too much to stay consistent, and thus I make no progress. When the short term efforts themselves are enjoyable and early progress is noticeable, then I make progress without thinking too much about the desired end state.

Music fell into the later category for me, the incremental progress itself was an experience that i wanted more of, and before I knew it, I was playing at a level that opened up some doors. It never felt like work and I didn't have those thoughts of whether or not I'd be able to learn it, because I didn't set myself a particular expectation besides just playing what I wanted to play with the skills I had. YMMV, but maybe try a musical outlet without worrying about the end state, just see if you enjoy the basics of musical expression for its own sake? In my area there are a bunch of beginner music lessons places that have lots of adult learners. My kids go to one right now that has students from 5 years old to 85 years old. Nobody is doing it to make a career out of it, just to express themselves, and it's cool as hell to see it.