Sometimes I'll ask someone "what?" as in "repeat what you just said" and by the time they start repeating, my brain will have parsed the previous sentence and I want to tell them "nevermind" but I don't because that's embarrassing so I have to listen to it again.
Yep! Just as common for me to start responding to the initial comment before they’re even able to start repeating themselves. Just reflexive “what?” from me all day, people hate it (me)
Now that I think about it, I’m going to propose that rubber duck debugging is a way to compensate for ADHD and undiagnosed ADHD is very common among programmers. It’s really just a variant of the “talk through a problem out loud” coping strategy.
I'd say it does very well happen to everyone, but some people might find it much more relatable in general than others. And there would be a correlation between finding it very relatable and a diagnosis on the spectrum, but no hard causality.
Not exclusive to ADHD at all but being on medications really helps me think things through beforehand, which helps avoid OP’s situation.
But anyway you are voluntarily posting on an ADHD forum and finding commonality with an ADHD meme. If you were waiting for a sign to get evaluated: this is it. Just keep an open mind, since ADHD symptoms can be caused by a lot of things.
Same. Happens with my work. I'm sitting on a problem I cannot get past. So I start a group email to see if someone else has had a similar problem before. Halfway through explaining, I find the answer.
At least with an email, you can just close it and pretend it didn't happen.
ChatGPT (especially GPT-4) is the best for this. You can ask whatever you want without being judged, and it helps you think through the details. You can even ask it to make its answers ADHD-friendly by formatting them as bullet points and using emojis, bold and italics.
Here I asked it to explain the Fediverse in an ADHD-friendly way. The explanation is a bit too simplified for my taste but it covers all important aspects:
What's Fediverse? 🌐 It's a big, friendly neighborhood of social networks. Think of it as many houses (sites) on the same street.
Different sites, but connected: 🔄 Like sending an Instagram message to a Twitter user. Different sites in the Fediverse can chat, post, and share with each other!
You're in Control: 🕹️ You pick your site, you control your data. If you don't like one, you can switch but still keep your friends.
Open Source: 📝 The software is open source. Think of it like a recipe anyone can use or modify. So new cool features can pop up from anywhere!
Variety of Platforms: 🎨 There's Mastodon for tweets, PeerTube for videos, Pixelfed for photos, and more. Choose your own adventure!
Remember: The Fediverse is like a big party 🎉 where everyone's invited, and you get to pick which room you hang out in!
Or while they answer my brain starts churning through the other 670932 things it has going on inside it and I don't really hear the answer...ooh...rainbow.