ADHD 2.0: New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction - from Childhood through Adulthood

It is in the DMN mode that you can daydream (and miss your exit on the highway) or make interesting connections between concepts (helpful when appreciating riddles or jokes or solving crossword puzzles, or coming up with the Next Big Thing). It was surely in the DMN that the wheel was discovered!

Indeed, our minds are here and there and everywhere—all at once—which sometimes manifests as appearing to be somewhere else, in some dreamy state.

A wandering mind.

Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed.

We are entrepreneurs ourselves, and the great majority of the adult patients we see for ADHD are or aspire to be entrepreneurs too. The owner and operator of an entrepreneurial support company called Strategic Coach, a man named Dan Sullivan (who also has ADHD!), estimates that at least 50 percent of his clients have ADHD as well.

We like irrational. We’re at home in uncertainty. We’re at ease where others are anxious. We’re relaxed not knowing where we are or what direction we’re headed in.

Often has trouble holding attention on tasks or play activities.

You’d find ideas firing around like kernels in a popcorn machine: ideas coming rat-a-tat fast, and on no discernable schedule. Ideas coming in spontaneous, erratic bursts. And because we can’t turn this particular popcorn machine off, we are often unable to stop the idea generation at night; our minds never seem to rest.

We are the people Marlon Brando spoke for in the classic 1954 film On the Waterfront when he said, “I coulda been a contender.” So many of us coulda been contenders, and shoulda been for sure.