I actually don't care about the status/karma aspect of votes.
Negative votes would be more constructive if reasons were given for it (aka feedback).
Positive votes, what is their use even? A "seal of quality" granted by HN users or simply a measure of how interesting a post appears to the HN crowd? It's probably the latter. Hard to make judgments about the general quality of the post by vote counts alone.
At least HN is not like the YouTube trending section where a lot of clickbaity videos appear.
You will encounter titles like:
"I ate nothing for 1 hour and this is what happened"
"I bought $200,000 worth of bananas and now I'm broke (and sad, lost in an island full of monkeys barely scraping by)"
"You won't believe this happened"
"Do this one trick (and waste 10 min of your time)"
"I almost got killed"
I'm sure you even encountered fancier ones, but these are what came off the top of my head.
How to get people hooked on our site long enough and make them watch ads? That's YouTube for you. HN is quite different and thank goodness it is.
Okay, you handled some of your ADHD symptoms with stimulants, routines, and sleep. How did you fix your social/interpersonal skills?
Don't you have trouble interpreting social cues correctly?
What about organization? How did you fix that? Or will medication fix all of the above automatically?
My take on this as someone who's been on atomoxetine for a year is that, no, this won't automagically fix your problems.
But it gives you a chance.
Me on atomoxetine means I can actually: a) slow down, b) get an intuitive feel of passing time, c) tune out anxiety-inducing thoughts, which in combination are enough to get me through most days. Think of it as learning how to work again for the first time. Most people have had decades of practice on this and you're essentially starting from scratch. What would you do differently?
At best they might help, at worst, you wasted your money.
PS: Have you tried fish oil (or perhaps algae oil) and zinc? According to the findings I provided, they might help you too.
I have not, only since the latest "health supplements" scam of our time is exactly these kinds of "healthy mushroom boosters". Claiming all kinds of insane health benefits from "mushroom extract" etc. But wrapping it in an earthy Goop-esque marketing cascade targeting rich house-wives and wall street types. You'd be surprised how much BS wall street types fall for (even when something is just priced idiotically high), for instance Molekule air purifiers (literally fake science and work half as well as a $12 HEPA filter) and anything made by Dyson haha.
I am also disappointed with how this "Ask HN" of mine unfolded.
It is perhaps my fault. I should have clarified things from the start.
My intention was to (prematurely?) optimize self-help strategies without medication, but my point wasn't well taken it seems.
Okay, to summarize, here are the list of things that might help when you are unable to get medicated or therapy:
1. Supplements: Omega-3, Zinc, Lithium (has severe side effects, but it works)
2. Mindfulness: Meditation/Yoga
3. Routines (according to HN answers)
Here is the list of things that I personally (!) think that might help:
4. Digital organization: Johnny File System, PARA Method
Here is the list of things I am personally (!) unsure about:
5. Offline organization/planning: Bullet Journaling
6. General organization: minimalism? Decluttering?
The list of things that need also attention:
7. Social skills & interpreting social cues correctly
8. Interpersonal skills & soft skills (manners?)
9. Effective "crutches" for things like impulsivity
Some more ideas that might help or not - these are rather experimental:
I mix the PARA system with JFS by numbering it in the JFS manner.
For example, I have a note called "Minimalism", so I store it in "02-AREAS" like this:
"2.01 Minimalism"
Now let's say I want to totally change my minimalism list, then I am going to archive that in "04-ARCHIVE" like so:
"4.01 2.01 Minimalism"
Then I reuse the 2.01 for my minimalism list again.
Another side note: Bullet Journaling is something that I am looking into, but I am not yet familiar with it. My take on it is: you are an operating system scheduling tasks out of a task list.
This is what a key in a bullet journal might look like paired with Standard Notes:
• task
x completed
> moved forward
< scheduled task (future)
~~cancelled~~
○ event
- note
! important
To be clear, therapy and medication is the best available option, but not everybody has access to it. In that case, what would be the next best option? (That is what I am actually asking.)
Also, there are some restrictions on medication in certain countries (e.g. Japan):
First of all, IMHO it is really important to get diagnosed by a good doctor and to rule out other reasons which could cause ADHD symptoms.
ADHD is a broad spectrum and every life is different.
The next best option I could recommend is to learn about symptoms from ADHD, examine how they are affecting your quality of life and have 'physical' crutches in place where you need them. This is highly personal, takes time for experiments to see what works for you right now, and when your situation/environment changes, you must adapt and perhaps change or create new crutches.
Still, there is a lot of stuff you simply cannot fix w/o medication: Impulsivity and focus are my biggest Achilles heels.
If there is no way for you to get medication you have to learn what problematic situations will be for you and try to avoid them from the start, because there is no way you can trust in prolonged self control if you have ADHD.
"I ate nothing for 1 hour and this is what happened" "I bought $200,000 worth of bananas and now I'm broke (and sad, lost in an island full of monkeys barely scraping by)" "You won't believe this happened" "Do this one trick (and waste 10 min of your time)" "I almost got killed"
I'm sure you even encountered fancier ones, but these are what came off the top of my head.
How to get people hooked on our site long enough and make them watch ads? That's YouTube for you. HN is quite different and thank goodness it is.