A simple ADHD life lesson from solitaire

[mmcaulay]

As a 50-year-old man who's only known about my ADHD for about three years, I'm still discovering things about how I function, and ways I can improve those things equipped with the knowledge of my condition.

This simple observation may fall into the, "too obvious to mention," category, but I wanted to share in case it resonated with anyone.

I think most of us are all too aware the rules of this world were made by neurotypical people for neurotypical people. As such, there are a lot of things we take on because that is the blanket expectation for people.

But I'm finding tremendous power and freedom in scrutinizing those rules to try to discover which of them actually matters. As I continue to review the behaviors required by such rules (and what traits they may be trying to instill), I've been looking back at my life with brutal honesty. Which of these have proven to be fundamentally impossible for me? Which of these, no matter how much effort I've put into creating better habits, are no further along than the first time I tried to follow the rule? Here's where solitaire comes in, and a lesson that is honestly transforming how I approach life.

I play a lot of solitaire on my phone and tablet because it's an easy source of dopamine when I'm struggling, and it provides enough of a boost to keep me going and eventually get back to what I had been trying to do.

But it's also come with its fair share of frustrations. My brain wants to operate at a certain speed. No matter how hard I work to try to slow down, my hands will click to the next card etc. right as I notice, I need to use that card. This has driven me crazy most of my life. I have felt so ridiculous and incompetent that I simply couldn't seem to get into the habit of slowing down enough to not blow right by the card I needed.

The traditional answer to this is to work at making a habit of remembering to slow down, find little tricks etc. to remind yourself, or other tactics. What I can tell you after about 40 years of this is that it simply doesn't work for me. And the amount of energy I use when I can even remember to try to slow down is, sadly, quite draining.

We are constantly taught the importance of slowing down, so we don't make mistakes. And there is definitely wisdom in that. But doing so requires the brain to function in a particular way. For some of us, it just doesn't.

At this point, I think it's good to reflect on when and how this kind of advice evolved. Simply put, it was an age without computers. An age without the undo button. Most solitaire games come with an undo feature. But I'd say a lot of people "feel bad," about having to use it.

In the last few days, as I've come to realize, I will never be able to consistently slow down and when I do, it will be prohibitively expensive, I've decided to embrace it. Does it honestly matter if I need to keep taking advantage of the undo button? No, it really doesn't. I feel like this huge weight was lifted, and now I'm simply enjoying the game.

Even though, someone outside my situation might disapprove of me not working on slowing down, the reality is, for me, that's not an option. It just doesn't matter if I slow down or not. And not just because it's a game. As a programmer, if I'm working so fast, that as I type code and I select the wrong function but realize the mistake, just as I finish typing it, CTRL+ Z comes to the rescue. This is part of why I think about the origins of these rules and bits of advice coming from an era without computers. Making a mistake on a typewriter was a pain. It muddied the text when using whiteout, etc. But in the era of computers, making a mistake, you quickly catch, becomes irrelevant. I'm not saying this is advisable for everyone, ADHD or not. It comes down to how YOU function. Honestly evaluate if you're actually able to fix the root cause of the "problem." If not, move on to mitigating it.

We always want to fix things at their source, and rightly so. But for people in our shoes, some things are simply beyond our reach due to how we're wired. Given that, I think it's incredibly empowering to evaluate the things you're trying to achieve in your life and discover if you've had any success at fixing it.

Maybe it's time to look at ways of being able to produce the desired end product (in my case, error free code), without trying to achieve it in the same way neurotypical people do. There are likely ways, you can leverage the strengths of how you think to still get from point A to point B in an efficient manner, despite it looking like a "mess," to any bystander.

The game of solitaire revealed the basic truth that the rules and the traits they may be trying to instill in us, may not align with our brain. And that it's ok to embrace your own path. I'm enjoying the game in ways I haven't in as long as I can remember. I think, especially for adults, who have been trying to attain certain traits without success, it's reasonable to stop and ask if it's time to switch from fixing to mitigating.

Please let me know your thoughts on this perspective in tackling the tasks we live with each day.

[BlueOptimistic]

Well said mmcaulay! I’m trying to find a way to save or send this to me and keep it in my studio. As an artist we look for the unique and showing something in a different way. But the rules of solitaire and other one-way only rules keep us locked into expectations of others. Thank you for providing this example to reflect on areas in our lives that are so difficult and unsatisfying. No doubt they have neurotypical constructs, we need to turn them into our easy ways to succeed.

[LuisBarcelona]

I really liked your insights!! Thanks for sharing !!!I read them twice at lightning speed!!! Between divergents we understand each other In my case I slow down to leave space for others in interpersonal communications because I can be very intense and it doesn't go well for the relationship. At work I try to organize myself well at a slow pace to be more productive, but the vast majority of times I am in lightning mode. My neurodivergence is also accompanied by a divergence in my sexual orientation and I think that the way is the one you mentioned: to accept our heterogeneity and be aware of the irrational cultural effect of wanting us all the same.

[mmcaulay in reply to LuisBarcelona]

Thanks, I think I can generally slow down in conversations now, though that has come with a lot of practice and a major change in how I view conversations. I used to "game out," every permutation of a conversation I could think of. So when someone said something, I may have devoted an entire hour contemplating that branch of the conversation the night before. But it gave the opposite impression. That my quick answers showed I wasn't considering what they'd said, or I hadn't really been listening (a bit of a fair point on the last one).

After a very long time, I began to see that pattern of gaming out conversations was incredibly unhealthy, and wasn't helping me in the way I imagined. I also discovered that because my emotions couldn't tell the difference between the imagined conversations and the real one, I'd put myself through all of the emotions of the worst ways the conversation could go.

I still work on it, and I continue to come back to the fact that it's better that I'm fully mentally and emotionally present in the conversation and might have to say, "I'll have to get back to you on that," than to have a "perfect" answer for anything they might say. I know this one is a tough one for a lot of people, but if we can embrace that it really is better to be in that moment, I think it's a much healthier and fulfilling way to live.

[LuisBarcelona]

How interesting! Being present in the absence and saying I'll have to think about it sounds very rational and healthy. I usually get ahead of myself and get excited and I could be right because of a good intuition, but it's not good. Even if I'm right, I always think that interrupting because of our speed is unhealthy. When it happens to me I apologize, if it's necessary but without blaming on me. For me the challenge is to find the middle ground where I can be myself with my intensity and give space to others as well. What a challenge!

[ScottyJ]

This reminds me of something I recently said to a friend of mine. "If I have one advantage over others, it's my ability to make mistakes. I can make a lot of mistakes really fast. I can make more mistakes per minute than anyone I know!"

[MaudQ]

Love it. I’ve had a seemingly opposite but similar discovery with the crossword 😁 Sometimes if I make myself slow down it’s more fun. I’ve caught myself in many many areas of my life rushing through a project and then having to redo, redo until it’s right, rather than stop on the first or second pass to really work through a step that’s causing problems. It’s not fun. It’s stressful and a huge time waster. So with the crossword, I’ll speed through my first pass, but then I try to take my time on the clues that are eluding me. I’ve been rushing through stuff my whole life, but the silver bullet was switching over to identifying what was fun for me vs making me unhappy. It’s more fun to do the crossword when I’m not cycling futilely through it for hours. The lists, alarms, schedules, hacks etc are fine but the key to the kingdom is being aware of what I enjoy. Not sure why no one tells you this at the get go 😑

[mmcaulay in reply to MaudQ]

I definitely agree. As hard as it is for "outsiders" to accept. We really are stuck in, "if I like it, I can do it. If I don't like it, I probably can't or it will be so expensive as to render the effort moot." It sounds so childish in one sense. "I only do the stuff I like." But obviously, that's not what we're actually saying or dealing with. It's about recognizing the differences in our brains, which forces us to approach things in ways that are often very different.

That other path includes the requirement for dopamine releasing activities. I think it's incredibly freeing to pull away from the, "if you don't like it, you especially need to do that to become more well-rounded." It's not that I have issues with that advice for neurotypical people, but for many people with ADHD it's a prison sentence.

There are obviously things in life we can't avoid, and we have to figure out our own hacks to getting those things done. But if we do have a choice, and many times we do despite what others think, I think it's prudent to do the things that are energy positive. Life is hard enough for us. We don't need to constantly try a path that's harder because that's what everyone thinks we're supposed to do.