A friend referred me to the Zen Habits webpage a while back, and they have a fantastic post about clearing your computing environment of distractions, reachable here:
http://zenhabits.net/2007/06/8-practical-tips-to-cure-your-internet-add-attention-deficit-disorder/
They have a wonderful step by step process to go from clutter to concentration, so I'll leave them to do that. I'm not above this, at all, and I really...REALLY need to take the advice in this blog post to heart. To give you an idea, I have AIM up and running in the background, a new Wordpad document...
...and twelve tabs open in Firefox.
Par for the course, I guess, having 'true' (biological/brain-based) ADD.
What the post refers to as "Internet ADD" is exactly what Drs. Hallowell and Ratey describe as 'pseudo-ADD' in Answers to Distraction; environmentally encouraged ADD-like behavior.
Interestingly enough, I ran across other authors who believe the same thing. In a fascinating book on neurofeedback called A Symphony in the Brain, by Jim Robbins, the final chapter is FULL of people he interviewed who believe there's more root causes for A.D.D. diagnoses than simple biology. Among them are the authors of The A.D.D. Book (mentioned on pages 230-232), who believe that traditional ADD diagnoses stem from three sources: environmental problems (most likely at the school), people who learn differently from typical methods (essentially a hassle for the system to cope with), and people with neurobiological problems (i.e. true A.D.D.).
There are more solutions than medication. Finding them, sadly, is the tricky part. My hope is that the schools have, or soon will, become more helpful in pointing people to n0n-chemical interventions and not leave people dead in the water.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment