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ADHD doesn't make you smarter or faster.
What are you talking about? I know very little about so many things! I can hyperfocus on like 3 different activities that just pass the time until death and don't benefit me at all!
I don't ever stop moving. I do isometric exercises constantly as part of my fidgeting. Some of my muscle groups, weird ones, are genuinely terrifying at this point. Like i have to be careful what gear i buy because ill just break some of it while im watching a movie.
If i didnt id be a lump. So not faster, but stronger, more flexible, more coordinated, with a little more endurance.
My curiosity and tangents over the decades have lead me to a ridiculously broad pool of knowledge, with very small wells of substantial depth, just kind of passively as a result of being me.
Disagree.
It may make one smarter if it causes them to have to work harder than others to reach the same level.
With speed it is too easy to be distracted getting things done quickly and efficiently can become a coping skill.
Not how any of that works, this is all contrarian coping propaganda.
Life is all about coping. Feeling like your neurological differences makes you weak is one way to cope but not for me.
If you have to work harder than other to reach the same level and to keep it, you are not smarter or dumber, you just have a disability that makes it harder.
That's not what I said.
I can't say I'm surprised how adamantly people want to play the disability card. Life's hard. My family is full of people with adhd and the ones that lean into it are all doing very very poorly. Those of us that have worked out coping mechanisms have all increased our socioeconomic position.
It's your life. Do with it what you want.
This sort of thinking isn't unique to ADHD. For example, there are also Little people who refuse to see themselves as disabled.
That doesn't mean those who choose to see themselves are disabled are wrong but anyone who demands someone see themselves as disabled is not only wrong, they're also an asshole.
That ADHD is a disability is a fact, it makes living in society harder. Also, saying that someone has a disability and that someone is disabled is different, I did not say that.
You worked out coping mechanisms that you must employ so that life isn't harder than baseline for you as long as you apply them, I would say that you are working harder than someone that doesn't need to think of coping mechanisms.
I completely agree that someone that's little isn't a disabled person because they are more than their disability, but denying that what makes them different from others makes their life overall way harder would be unwise. It's a disability for which a lot of countries have money and help programs specifically because life's harder than for people who don't have it because society sin't designed for little people, or for people with ADHD, or whatever other thing.
Let me repeat it because I really want to drive home the point that I never said that you or anyone else is disabled. Disabilities are part of what defines a person, not what solely defines it, but three's nothing wrong with acknowledging that something is a disability because it makes living in society harder.
Edit: I reread your old comment and you did say the following:
It may make one smarter if it causes them to have to work harder than others to reach the same level.
That's what I was commenting on, your premise is that if ADHD makes one work harder to reach others' level, then that will help them be smarter. I disagree with that notion, I would say that if with ADHD you are able to reach others' level, you were smarter to begin with. So the smartness of the person is irrelevant to my comment, it's the part about having to work harder to reach the same level that I was highlighting. You being able to work out the coping mechanisms and keep using them is because you are smart, not the other way around.
Can we stop with the narrative that disorders that completely fuck your life up and make you struggle with things normal people do without thinking is somehow a ""superpower"?
The last word is “disorder” for a reason
And the other D is for "deficit"!
If you have an above average Intelligence, the mechanisms you develop can lead to excelling in many areas. But it comes at great costs and not everyone is this way. It also depends how bad you've got it.
If you are smart, you manage it better and people perceive you as smart.
Uh... Duh? You basically said "if smart, smart".
Fair enough :D
The point is, if you're lacking in the intelligence department, then you gain nothing from ADHD and are perceived as annoying and that's it. If you're intelligent, you're at least likely to become something of a jack of all trades.
ADHD has pros and cons. People usually forget about the pros, a little balance seems a good thing to me.
(Although ADHD does not mean higher than average intelligence, that is not one of the pros.)
For me, it's been a net negative (I think). But I wouldn't have been with my loved ones if I don't have ADHD.
ADHD makes you smarter? That’s some bullshit
Saying that ADHD makes you smarter is bullshit. However there are definitely tasks that ADHD can make you better at which is likely what this person was refering to. There's a reason a lot of the best repair techs I work with have an ADHD diagnosis or show clear symptoms despite having never sought out a diagnosis. ADHD can make you really good and forming connections between different ideas that most people wouldn't be able to do as quickly which can help with, for example, diagnosing issues in complex systems. However if you ask those same people to perform a basic task thoroughly and in a standardized fashion then we're usually going to be way worse at it than the average person. It's literally just being differently abled.
For example, when I'm off my sweet sweet prescription speed, I can narrow down and locate issues in a building wide automation system in a couple of hours where other techs spent all day trying and failing to find it. But at the same time, when I'm off my meds, cleaning an ice machine can take me 6 hours where one of our neurotypical techs would easily have it done even better in under 3 hours and I will have no idea what I spent all that extra time on because I will have felt like I was rushing the entire time.
Some people see being able to do complex troubleshooting quickly as beeing "smart" but it's really just a different skillset. You could call me "smart" but I literally need regular doses of amphetamines just to be able to do the most basic prioritization like paying bills on time, and cleaning my house so I personally wouldn't say that I'm particularly "smart".
There's also a reason a very large portion of developers are neurodivergent.
IT in general but yes, and you can tell they aren't smarter because a lot of them are Libertarians as well. Fucking morons.
It helps with pattern recognition and one of the main aspect of intelligence tested on IQ tests are pattern recognition, so it might inflate the IQ scores of people with ADHD and gives the impression that they're smarter than the average person?
Also, lots of early primary school stuff can be easily deduced by pattern recognition. I coasted school until I hit high school, which I think a lot of people here can relate.
I excelled at taking tests. One of my particularly exceptional (now useless) abilities was to deduce the answer to one question based on the wording of another question.
Curiosity is often enough.
Yes. I got it from an ex and now I'm smart af
ADHD makes you more intelligent in the same way that being chased by a bear makes you a runner, or having kids makes you a morning person.
A weaponised intellect is a useful counter to ADHD. We also tend to be built differently. Think tank Vs car. This makes us abnormally good at certain tasks, at the cost of others.
Poor impulse control, novelty seeking, and unlimited internet access tends to explain the rest.
Feels like gassing adhders up.
Fun but not accurate.
This is the kind I got
I have about a 3:2 ratio in favor of stupid vs. smart.
running in circles doesn't make you faster
going blahblahblahblah doesn't make you smarter
Yeah you're right Pete, you're much smarter and faster than everyone else buddy, I'm gonna put this tweet up on the fridge because it's so clever
It does not affect IQ, but the average ADHD brain is smaller.
We just have good compression
PNGs in a BMP world.
Forced induction, bro
Tip-to-tip efficiency
Middle out?
I thought of a quick mental pace, frequently jumping from thought to thought, inevitably going off on tangents. That's what I interpreted from the line about being "smarter and faster." However, having that quickness translated into "smartness" is far from the only way for it to manifest.
You may have a quick mental pace, but it doesn't help you find solutions - it just repeatedly pulls you into depression or anxiety by effortlessly connecting negative thoughts to literally anything that crosses your mind. Or you have quick thoughts, but struggle to track back to things from earlier on - leading to a feedback loop of distraction that makes conversations, movies, and sometimes even your own ideas, very difficult to follow.
Side note: I feel like if I lived in a pre-literate society, I'd be far more disabled than today. I don't know how I'd function if I weren't able to write down my thoughts, or read (and re-read) information. The written word provides a structure and direction that the spoken word and abstract thoughts don't have. I may be seen as "smarter" in the modern world, but someone like me from the ancient past would've been at a massive disadvantage.
I feel like if I lived in a pre-literate society, I'd be far more disabled than today
Living and working in a more close knit social group could offset many ADHD issues. Our strengths and weaknesses could balance each other out.
Information retainment and such can be accomplished with songs and stories.
And we would be the scouts and night watch for the community. If neurodivergence isn't environmentally caused, and I don't believe it is, why would it still be so common in our species?
circle j***ing much?
I don't think ADHD itself makes you smarter. It's more about autism and some personality disorders which look very similar to ADHD or even live alongside it.
When you have ADHD and Dunning-Kruger.
please stop glazing my mental condition it will get more confident and take over the world
Smarter: lmao, thats the autism, the adhd hyperfocus gives me super task-avoidance
Faster: LMFAO. My reaction time is noticeably slow. I was a lifeguard for a while, which is why I am very aware of this
The only upsides are the coping mechanisms I have been forced to develop for it have been super helpful in my adult life
Yes!!!! Task avoidance is the absolute worst.
Coping mechanisms? Apparently I didn’t get those. I’m currently sitting on the couch avoiding a multitude of things I need to do reading ADHD memes.
Hey, I'm not saying i don't do that, but I'm really good at forgiving myself for getting stuck in an avoidance spiral (since if you start beating yourself up you now have one more thing to avoid) and that means I'm really fucking good at forgiving other people, which means I'm also really fucking good at conflict resolution.
The fastest lemmy alive
Smarter and faster, but the same fuel tank and no brakes.
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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