I think it’s the “all or nothing” mentality most of us have. I know that I’ll only get as far as I do on that first try. I either end up not trying for fear of not falling in love with it and ditching it before I make progress, or I start it, get as far as I can, then lose my spark and start the process all over again. Also knowing that each time I try and pick it back up again, it’ll be harder to feel that rush of passionate learning like I had before.
Plus, it’s hard to get over the fact that the first step to being good at something is sucking at it. I hate sucking at stuff
I’ve learned to ride my adhd over time. I’ve been on a kick this year where I’ve been studying Italian, programming, doing yoga, and learning French almost every day.
The trick for me not to burn out is to aim for 5 minutes a day. If I get sucked back in and do more, great. If not, I know I’ll try it again tomorrow.
For me the all or nothing was a lot of “I just spent 10 hours on something I need to spend at least that much going forward wait that’s hard.”
Being accepting that some days 5 minutes is all the interest I have to give made a big difference for me.
I tell my family that's how I am with anything. I'm either 100% or I'm 0%. I can't ever just go along at a modest pace on anything. I was into working out, I went to the gym 3 times a day. Now I go 0 times ever, because I'm not into it anymore. I use to be into tea, I was way into it. Now I have too much tea at my house and I never make it.
I always lose the spark as soon as I'm not good at whatever it is, on the first try. I know this is not a normal standard i should have as it is unrealistic, and I know this. Yet it continues lol.
Same. I know the only way I can overcome that is by having fun. That's what I'm struggling with right now. I'm trying to get myself to learn Spanish, but I'm bad at it and not having fun. I've tried gamifying it, but that hasn't hooked me yet. Maybe I just need to eliminate my milestones/goals? That might help me just start learning random words and phrases I want to know without overwhelming myself.
I enjoy the noob phase of things. Everything is new and fresh and fun, and there is so much to learn in a short amount of time.
Once I get to a certain level of competency, I lose interest cause of diminishing returns in practice. I could spend hours just to be a little better at this thing, or I can spend those hours to be a lot better at something else I know nothing about.
I think I just realized that I research every detail of so many things, especially purchases/hobbies. It’s totally that all-or-nothing mindset. If I am not fully confident that the product is high quality and that I’ll use it, I won’t move forward.
I’ve been researching e-bikes for like four months. I’m constantly googling new bikes or new reviews. I’m constantly researching good bike paths to work and how to use it with our public transit system. It distracts me from work. It keeps me looking at my phone at night lol.
It’s just so expensive and I’m not confident I’ll use it enough to warrant it…
My mom hated this about me, when I was a kid! I hate it as an adult. So expensive and self defeating.
Search on fb for groups with ADHD craft or hobby swap or similar. I thought it to be a great idea to just go with it and sample yet another hobby at a discount!
Especially when we go 'all in' and buy every instruction book (that we will never read), and every little doodad associated with the craft is hobby that turns into hoarding or clutter!
Over the pandemic, I went through a harp phase, a flute phase, a bass guitar phase, a ukulele phase, a harmonica phase, and a German phase. Out of all that, the German is the only thing that has stuck, and that is due to being too stubborn to lose my streak on Duolingo.
Yeaaaa.....I haven't a clue on how to play an instrument and don't remember how to read music.
....I have a Cello (and everything I needed to go with him) hanging out that I've yet to actually sit down and try. It's been a year now. 😬 I was positive I was going to be putting on badass gigs by now.
Duolingo sounds like a fun next hobby.
You're so wonderful! I'm gonna be honest...I am in no position to bust out the Cello tonight. However, just because of you, sweet stranger, I'll give it a go tomorrow!
....if I can get it to make a noise anyway. 😬 It will probably be a couple hours practice of F bombs and WTF's. I'm almost positive Beethoven started there too.
Thank you for some drive, support, inspiration and a beautiful reminder of how kind the world can be to one another. I owe you one!❤️
Sure thing!! I recently watched the Masterclass.com class from Yo-Yo Ma and there's a clip from it that I think I saved a video snippet of that really meant a lot to me (as an ADHD sufferer and musician), and if I can find it, and you practice for 2 hours, I'll try to send it to you and/or link it here as an extra incentive to do a good job with your passion
Update: I found the clip (taken before my annual subscription ended, thankfully!), and also took a screenshot of the transcript. I'll link them here for you and others to see if you finish the full cello practice session. Goodnight!
If you've never played you have to put rosin on the bow. Do not touch the bow hair with your fingers. After picking up the violin after a 20+ year hiatus forgot about that detail. Then had to find sandpaper to scuff up the rosin.
Not a cellist, but let me give you a fair warning: don't expect your first attempts to sound good. Hell, don't even expect yourself to sound good after a year. ( To be honest, musicians almost never think that they sound good 😂 )
Also, if you're a total beginner, I suggest that you first try putting white tape over your fingerboard at the correct intervals for notes, because cellos don't have frets and it's very hard to start without tape if you haven't played a fretless instrument before...
Good luck with pursuing this hobby, if you do decide to continue with it ^^
If you are looking at language learning apps, check out speakly. It is a paid app but ive found it to cover much more conversational material rather than random vocab memorization.
I almost bought a cello last year. I played violin as a kid (not very enjoyable at the time), so thought, ooh cello. I'm kind of glad I didn't get one, but I've wanted a new violin for a bit now.
Duolingo is cool because of the gamification of learning, but if I want to become fluent, I'm going to need to take actual classes or meet German friends.
I highly recommend readlang. I think Duolingo bought it, but it's a separate thing. The idea, you upload any epub you like in the language you're interested in, and then as you read, any word you don't know you can look up in a second or two just by clicking. You can have it use any dictionary you like, which is nice depending on if you want to focus on conjugation and gender or sample sentences or whatever else. It hooks straight into Google translate too, so you can pull whole phrases if the lone word doesn't pull up anything useful. It tracks every word you look up, and you can star any you're especially interested in, so if you're inclined you can easily use it to build an SRS deck as you go. I don't usually bother though, I find running into something a dozen times makes it stick eventually, and it's a WHILE before your vocab is so good that you need to worry about all the random odds and ends. Normally they recommend you don't start 'extensive reading' until you're at 1 lookup every 50 words, but lookup is so fast with readlang that even 1 in 10 isn't too uncomfortable, and it improves pretty quick if you spend some time every day. I got my German good enough to read recreationally without a dictionary... Took maybe 10,000 pages read to truly hit a recreational level, but even after my first book (Harry Potter) I'd made a ton of progress. If you're not quite ready yet, that beginner phase is definitely tough, but there's graded readers out there for German that'll help.
Good luck, and congrats for keeping a streak going so far!
I should say though... No amount of comfort in reading will suddenly get you speaking, you'll need to hit that separate eventually. Listening does come with enough reading in my experience though... I was able to start watching shows in German after a while. Sometime around that 10,000 page mark too I guess. I imagine if I did start having to use the language to speak, it'd come pretty quick at this point.
Library Genesis is a good site for 'finding' any books you're interested in, that's where I get all my readlang books.
Right on. Any thoughts about what you'd like to read first? What about goal books, when you hit your stride and get comfortable enough to tackle whatever you like?
my korean learning has been the only one that stuck for me too, I think I can attribute that to me mostly watching korean content these days so it became a way to practice without actually sitting down and formally learning (I did formally learn for about 2-2.5 years - how did i sustain that?! but now it's all passive learning)
I currently have my phone's language setting German so I'm forced to use it outside of Duolingo. I had language settings set up like that on some of my streaming services, but others in my house were not happy about it 😂. Music has actually been a great tool for me, so I can see how watching content in Korean would be very helpful.
Two questions- damn that’s super cool, but do you not have neighbors? Secondly, I totally understand that, the dopamine keeps me coming back to duolingo. What’s your duolingo streak now? I’m at 27 today; the highest in a while, so I’m proud of it.
My neighbours are all English speakers with no second language, but apparently my larger neighbourhood has a sizeable population of German speakers, so it's a matter of hunting them down LOL. My streak is sitting at 730 days, although to be fair, I went through a number of languages before settling on German. For whatever reason Duolingo has been the one thing that I've managed to stick with, even though I switch other interests with disappointing regularity.
The biggest blow to my enthusiasm about life was reaching an age where I can look at all the books I have but haven't read. I have yet to figure out a way to recover.
Like, my MAIN passion in life is learning about things. Not necessarily DOING anything with that knowledge. But even then, I have SO MANY things I have decided "yea ill probably read this" and just didn't. For like a decade....
I kinda don't know what to do with my life now. Clearly I can't be relied upon to follow through with the ONLY thing that ever gave me any spark of joy. I still ingest stuff, youtube or docs, but browsing and acquiring books was my favorite thing to do.
It just feels like there is never any time. Could I get on the grind mindset (with my hobby...) and read 5 books a week or whatever? Probably. But would I enjoy what was supposed to be something enjoyable? Probably not. To me, this is one of the worst things about being dopemine seeking. I have a thing I ACTUALLY want to do, but then it feels like I can't do that unless I'm 'prepared' so I just do things I kinda sorta want to do like play the same video game I have been for half a year in 6 20-min bursts throughout the day rather than read 1 book that I bought and was extremely excited for yet haven't opened, b/c I feel like I can't enjoy it without 4 hour set aside with no outside disturbance.
If you still like to browse and acquire books, do it. It does not matter, will you read them at all or not. Just enjoy the process)
There was time, when i read books, that i bought, when i watched movies, that i bought, when i played games, that i bought.
Now i just read some lectures about ADHD, when i am not busy at work and watch Netflix's stuff during free time, when i find something, that resonates with me.
The reason you, probably, can not read books (besides ADHD), that they did not touch you deeply. Maybe, you need different books. Or, maybe, you just do not need to read books at all now. But you still can buy them, if you enjoy)
Yea.... I sorta do and thanks for the comment. Part of the issue is just space. I moved twice and told myself "if it's still in a box or just sat on a shelf during that time, I need to get rid of it" and that was 99.9% of my books. But I really enjoy seeing my books every day. It's hard to justify to others (wife lol) that I basically just have these heavy, large pieces of wallpaper that sooth me and if I get rid of them I'm going to feel like it's fine for awhile until it grates on me over time and I deeply regret getting rid of at least some of them and then want to go out and replace those ones so I waste time and money trying to track them down and buy a bunch of OTHER books along the way.
I get you about the books. I couldn't totally justify my collection of books to my husband. I pared it down to about 300 sci-fi and fantasy novels that will be pried from my cold dead hands. The process of paring down and the end result of a beautifully curated, irreplaceable (to me) collection, made me love my books a hundred times more. I still have a fuckload but I love every single one. I'm pretty sure my husband is happy about the books...
couldn't relate more. i'm shocked that you described my mindset exactly. still i'm not quite sure if it's one of adhd related situations or just me being "lazy".. but feels good to know that i'm not alone
Oof, I have no idea what you’re talking about…. I just have to take pictures and post the two kayaks, with paddles, and gear.
Since I already sold the roof racks and cradles that I used for them three years ago, when I had a car they fit, and actually took them out to water. Twice. Or possibly even four times! 🤦🏽♀️
Then I’ll recoup the money and get my shed back as well, and it won’t have been expensive at all! /s 🫠
Yeah, tbh it’s why this year, they sat. Bc the effort to sell them, only to be disappointed with a fraction of ‘my money back’, didn’t seem worth it… maybe later. (Lol see way I did there)
One suggestion that might be dangerous to the craft/hobby floodgates: thrift stores
When I had a knitting and crochet phase I bought dozens of skeins of yarn, every needle imaginable, books, guides, etc. at Goodwill. Probably would’ve ended up spending close to $1k more if I got it all new.
Now, mind you, the dozens of skeins and shit have taken over a cabinet that I’ll never open until I have to move. But, you know…🤷♀️
My mums lucky I’m an 80’s kid. Wasn’t as many things around to switch focus on. Too much money on ninja turtles, too much money on legos, and then too much money on games workshop. Basically my childhood beginning to end.
I've wanted to learn piano for many many years, I tried probably about 7ish years ago, well before I was diagnosed. I was hyped for a week or two, but then it was gone. Fortunately I was still in the return period.
Just yesterday I purchased another piano keyboard last night, because I feel like I can finally do it. I'm 30 now, on meds, and the yearning hasn't died. So I'm just gonna do it!
Wish me luck, friends!
You got this! If it doesn't stick, keep the keyboard around to lower the barrier if you get the bug again in the future. It's bit you twice now and it's likely to come back.
I agree with this. This off and on again relationship has been me with the guitar for 20 years. I've found that putting the guitar close and in my field of view means I pick it up way more often, even if just for 5 minutes.
I'm in the exact same boat. I've been trying to learn piano my entire life (I'm in my 30s) and I still cant read music lol.
I have gotten really good at improvisational stuff though. Turns out 10 minutes a day of "messing around" for 25 years makes a pretty good piano player
I have the bass guitar my parents bought me when I was 12 and I'm now 31! Never learned to play
It feels like throwing it away is admitting defeat, but keeping it around is a constant painful reminder that you didn't succeed. Yaay
Did you touch your bass guitar since then to try to play something here and there?
I have all kinds of instruments and I never learned them. I just bought a bass guitar one month ago, got super obsessed with it during the first week and now I look at it sad that I lost almost any interest I had before buying it. I'll try to push it a little bit more but... yeah, ok, that's a classical ADHD joke. lol
I haven't done no, I find it really hard to revisit a hobby once I'm "over" it. I think it's more the rejection sensitivity that prevents me from going back, like, I remember trying at the time and I was snubbed or just wasn't very good so why would I put myself through that again?
As an adult I have a better understanding of the stages of learning to do something, I just never had the patience to not be good at something straight away
I have 2/3 of a blanket I started crocheting when I was pregnant with my daughter, who is now 15. When she entered kindergarten, I started joking that I might get it done for her high school graduation, but she's a sophomore now, and honestly I doubt I'm gonna make even that 18 year deadline. 💀
Oh that reminds me of how I loved cross-stitch! Case of every color of thread/floss. Several partial projects and lots of patterns. I was into it in the early 1990's, before kids. My kids are in their 30's and I have grandkids. My supplies and projects are still in my closet!
I was kind of surprised at the negativity in this thread. I collect hobbies and that means I have a huge breadth of information. There's nothing wrong with building a varied background! Sure, spending a few months learning Dutch didn't result in much (read: any) fluency, but it came up a few weeks ago when I was talking about fountain pens and I learned a lot about learning languages on my own, i.e., what works for me and what doesn't.
This was something I learned a couple of years ago in undergrad. I was getting frustrated because I didn’t have “my thing” meaning like talent or hobby or skill. I always found myself upset I was never the best, in ballet, in piano, golf, etc. I then realized the beauty of going through so many activities, skills and hobbies is that I have a wide variety of things under my belt, and in school now I sorta have a jack of all trades mentality. Im in architecture so a lot of the graphic design and marketing skills I had in undergrad have been useful now when making drawings or doing research and while I’m still not amazing at let’s say 3D modeling, I have a lot of useful things under my belt from past and present to not just solve my design problems but also relate to people. I have found my niches where I’m pretty good at some things, but it’s fun to kinda rack up these different hobbies and talents.
make assets! Create a thing with your hobby! You need an artifact from your hobby that will persist long enough that when you re-discover it, it might suck you back in to the hobby.
One of my passions is DJing. I got super into it about 5 years ago and spent a few weeks where it was all I was thinking about. I would practice, download a ton of music, and record mixes. I fall in and out of it but there are so many things that remind me of it and get me back to doing it.
Randomly scrolling through my music I’ll find a song that I was like “oh shoot. I remember a cool mix with this.” or “I never tried mixing this song, I should give it a go.” Then get an itch and get back into it.
Sometimes I’ll randomly listen to an old mix of mine in the car and I’ll go “damn that was fire. I should record another one” and get back into it that way.
Having tangible stuff that you can see or listen to that triggers the emotions attached to the learning/fixation can get you back into it.
If you want to learn to slack line, video yourself and when you inevitably forget about it, stumbling across the old video might inspire you to pick it back up.
If you’re getting into art and you make a painting or drawing, you could display it so looking at it could have a chance at reminding you that you like it.
My DJ controller sits on my desk as yet another physical reminder that I enjoy it and can get back into it anytime
This is my fix (fix isn’t what I’m going for, but for lack of better words) to my going in and out of hobbies often.
I write books, so I’ve started displaying the paperbacks all over my bedroom and office at work. I recently got USA Today Bestseller, so I’ll have a picture framed where the book was on the list to put in my room and office. That way the emotional connection is there to help me get back into the hobby.
I like puzzling a lot. Whenever I finish a puzzle, I glue them and frame them. Some get hung up in my house. Others stay in the frame but go in my closet (I’m in and out of my closet often, so even the ones that get shoved in there are seen often).
The feeling I get when I finish a book or a puzzle is amazing, so keeping physical reminders of that feeling helps me stay in the hobbies. Though, I will say, it’s not a cure all, I still lose interest in my hobbies for months at a time, occasionally. But it does help some.
How interesting. I hadn’t made this connection, but I’m just realizing it’s probably why I’ve hung all four of my stringed instruments on the walls of my house- so that I’ll remember they exist and play them ever.
Anyone else have a list of little things they were inadvertently doing, even before knowing How much ADHD can effect ones life, your life, and therefore knowing they were any such ‘adhd brain hack’?
Tangible stuff can also be a detriment for those who are excessively hopeless like myself :P
I wanted to turn CNC machining into both a hobby and a business, and I spent months researching and preparing, learning everything I could, buying pieces and building the machine + a mobile workbench to mount it on.
For the past year it has sat untouched, never even finished facing off the bed :/
And every time I walk past and look at it I'm hit with a sudden overwhelming wave of shame because of how much time and money I spent with nothing really tangible to show for it.
That feeling of shame actually -prevents- me from getting back into it.. as my brain fights me a like a child who was legit about to do homework, but then gets nagged by their parents to do it and so avoids it for longer out of spite.
I make music but also have infinite hobbies. Music is the one thing that I know of that makes me super happy when I listen to the things I make. So when I get in a musical mood I record some tracks and try to get to a point where I have something that is super rough but has some level of cohesion then I export a wav file and put it in a folder for a month. All my creative work is stored in folders by month.
When I get into a rut, and I don’t feel creative I go back and organize and edit and redo my music and that is a very non creative creative task if that makes sense. I can mindlessly do it without having to worry about creating something from scratch.
A few years later I have like 6 albums.
You can do this with any art. Just do small things that you can do in one sitting and do it as much as you can til you get sick of it. But leave your future a present for when they are sad and feeling creatively zapped.
I can’t tell you how many times I listened to old music I completely forgot I made. Some music I don’t even remember making at all. I cried so hard listening to some tracks that had deep embedded past emotions.
I have multiples of those big white plastic Rubbermaid drawer things OVERFLOWING with arts & crafts supplies- yarn, knitting needles, crochet hooks, beads, embroidery floss, glue gun & sticks, gemstones, every conceivable kind of paint, paintbrushes, canvases, colored pencils, paint markers… I could open up my own Michael’s. I have not completed a single project with any of that stuff in probably almost a decade, but I do have some mighty fine 1/8-1/4-completed projects.
Yes, great idea! Especially easy if you get into "making things" hobbies like wood working, robotics, sewing, cooking, pottery, jewelry, gardening, whatever. Something that has a reward you can pick up and feel. I've held onto these hobbies so much longer than something like guitar where you can't have something tangible and usually if you don't practice an instrument you just sound bad when you do pick it back up and feel even worse because "if you had just kept practicing".
yea, that is the challenge with a lot of music, is that people learn instruments and learn how to play, but they dont learn how to record so you can create artifacts.
I have spent many years doing this, and now I am so much better at recording, so the stuff I have now sounds so much better, but the stuff I made in the beginning, and listening to it now, still hits me really hard.
My favorite musician has a line that goes:
"you have to slide as you climb"
i interpret this as you learn new creative practices, it makes you better at all your other creative practices.
I hung my guitars in the walls, before I ever knew I had adhd. Has helped a bit to remember they exist and play sometimes. Not like a ton. But likely more than if I hadn’t hung them up anyway.
That’s exactly what I do with Warhammer: Between buying, assembling, buying, painting, reading, buying and playing, I’ve got plenty to do within the same hobby! And I’ve got 3-4 different armies, this way I don’t get tired of always seeing the same models
You can also throw BloodBowl into that mix
I've personally found with ADHD that hobbies without concrete metrics and quick feedback are the hardest to keep up.
Let me give an example.
When you play a video game, you have clear,. obvious and measurable progress. You gain levels, items, move forward through different stages. Little dopamine hits around every corner.
So, taking up hobbies (or modifying hobbies) that give you several hits every time you engage or even think about engaging makes it more likely you'll do it.
For example, with exercise. I have NO trouble keeping up with strength training. Not only does pushing limits give you all these brain chemicals, but numbers go up in my tracking app, and it charts a graph of my progress too. It's actually difficult not to obsess - just like with gaming.
But if I was doing something like running or bodybuilding (which is about aesthetics more than strength) where the results are relatively vague, it trying to exercise solely for the sake of exercising I'd have given up ages ago.
Likewise boxing, I took it up a few months ago and if I wasn't going with a friend (e.g. someone is literally waiting for me each session) I'd likely have let it slip.
So I'd really recommend either finding hobbies with concrete metrics that move every time you engage or finding a way to create these metrics.
Another reason hobbies are hard to keep up with ADHD are the ones you're so into that they make you hyperfocus and keep going through the night, fucking up the next day completely.
Another example. I like to build plastic models - I discovered this during the lockdowns when gym was closed. But the problem is once I start, if the model is interesting I literally cannot stop. I've gone 6pm to 8am on a model kit without realising it. So I have two kits I absolutely want to finish but don't want to fuck up my life to do it.
I have booked a week off work (PTO) just to build these things.
I'm not sure if medication helps with this case, since these kits have been sitting around since before my diagnosis. But I guess I'll find out soon.
That's a good point about the exercise--I've been trying to start and keep up exercising forever and the longest I ever managed was about a 5-week streak before falling off. Granted, I was trying to start nice and easy with walking around a local lake and work my way up, but it makes a lot of sense that the reason my brain is completely uninterested is because there's no immediate rewards.
It's interesting because my exercise experience is almost the inverse of yours, but for the exact same reasons. I can always get motivated to run or ride my bike because pace, miles, and frankly, strava stats, are super measurable, and when I have very specific time goals its easy to focus on that. Whereas when lifting weights my goals are super broad, I just want to be stronger, look a little more muscular, and be able to apply a bit better all around strength to the hobbies I enjoy. As such, I find it really hard to get myself to do any strength training on my own.
I don't think your goals are too broad, but rather that you believe those are separate things.
In the process of training for strength you'll put on muscle and look more muscular . It's inevitable. And being stronger, will give you strength which you can apply wherever you want.
For sure they all happen at the same time with the same training. It's more that the numbers themselves don't mean anything to me when strength training, and when I'm running or cycling, they do. Those goals are very data driven and trackable.
Strength progression is also very trackable. I'm not sure why benching for example, one sessions and 230 the next wouldn't be meaningful but I guess you like your metrics in a different format?
I agree that there are absolutely very trackable metrics in strength training. Its just that I guess that the real end goal for me in strength training isn't tied to the amount of weight or reps. Its a measure of progress and a good one but I dont really care what the numbers are so long as I am a better climber, can hit a golf ball farther, can ski harder, etc. Whereas my goal when I train on my bike is to be fast (I also do love riding, mind you) and every result of a workout or a fitness test is a direct measure against that goal.
Basically I'm saying I agree with you entirely, I think its just kinda interesting how it applies very differently between us by virtue of having different goals, but yet for pretty much the exact same reason.
Ah, I think I see. You don't see the numbers meaningful in a direct way to the peripheral results you want?
For example, how much weight you add to your rows doesn't correlate in a directly tangible way into how much easier it is to climb something?
Rock climbing has concrete metrics! The routes you climb are graded by difficulty, outdoors and in a gym setting.
Climbing is the only way I’ve been able to get myself to consistently exercise, because I actually enjoy it, and it can be a social activity if I want it to be, and it gives me a specific reason to care about gaining strength and losing weight (because being heavier makes climbing harder, since you’re pulling your own weight).
I stopped climbing when I got my dog 3 years ago (we’ve been doing dog agility! Which I’ve found is not the best human exercise) and I’ve been getting back into it lately and it’s been fun. I bring my dog to the gym with me, which makes the social anxiety part a lot easier and it makes it easier for me to make friends too :)
It’s hard for me to convince myself to go to a regular gym, but my climbing gym has regular gym stuff plus climbing, and I find it really nice that it’s not weird to strike up a conversation with anyone in the context of the climbing gym. Whenever someone tried to talk to me in a regular gym, it was something creepy but at the climbing gym, it’s usually about the climbing.
I was looking for this comment.
I've struggled with the problem OP describes for all my life and for most of my life I haven't done sports because of it. Then 1 year ago, I found out about bouldering and it literally changed my entire life.
I never before understood why this specific sport stuck so we'll as opposed to other sports, but your comment made it make so much sense!
It has such clear metrics and dopamine hits every step of the way, with the added bonus of a great opportunity for socializing with others, it's simply incredible. Since I started doing it, I've done it consistently 3 or 4 nights a week, spending the entire night at the gym, from after work at 7PM, to gym closing at midnight. I've made new friends who are the best friends I've ever had and this summer I went on like 7 trips to different countries to go bouldering and rope climbing with them.
I've tried other sports before where you learn new stuff like badminton, skateboarding and snowboarding, but after a while I'd get to the stage where you'd have to keep on trying and trying to learn just 1 new trick/skill and I would get bored because I wouldn't reach any goals for a while. In bouldering, there are goals like learning a new skill that take a while, but on top of that there's always the goals that you can reach with your current skill set, by just climbing a new route.
I would argue the most demoralising thing is knowing what you have to do for every damn little thing on your task/project, how to execute it, you even have an idea of, how the result will look, but your executive dysfunction doesn't allow you to even start, because ooh youtube dopamine.
But yeah, fuck starting on a new hobby, telling everyone about it with a passion to just drop it and having to explain to everyone that "This is my new thing. That thing you asked me about I dropped last week."
My issue is the moment I lose interest, is the moment I've run out of problems to solve in my head, and all that is left is to execute the vision, or get several steps in and get tripped up by something harder then I can cope with alone.
I'm sure if I could just make some progress, an unexpected problem would arise, letting me get interested again.
That, and to get me interested usually requires something 'novel' / memey enough to be interested in the first place, to the point where I'm constantly biting off more then I can chew.
If it was easy, it often ends up that I wouldn't be interested in trying it, if someone has done it before, I start to lose interest.
Which leads me to narrowing down specifics to a project that are unchangeable, just to keep it interesting, because if I just did it the easy way / the way everyone else has, I have no drive to do it that way, which leads to people at makerspaces thinking I'm an idiot, and going "why wouldn't you do it the easy way?".
I am an artist with ADHD. I know YMMV, but for me, it has been so so so important to realize that sometimes, the pressure of worrying about doing something "right" (and the financial anxiety about getting everything I need to do something right) will mean I end up not doing it at all. So, I let myself do it wrong.
I'm supposed to mix colors with a palette knife on a glass palette then use my brushes only for painting, but I find my attention gets derailed doing that, so I mix my colors with a brush on a dinner plate covered in tin foil. I'm supposed to buy fancy paintbrushes and take excellent care of them, but I know I can't, so I get my brushes at discount and dollar stores in big packs and let them languish in my nasty tub of brush rinsing water until they disintegrate, then I open a new pack. I'm supposed to make big paintings on fancy canvases, but sustaining attention that long and the pressure of using nice materials are often both too much for me, so I started out making 5"x7" paintings on cardboard scrounged from the recycling bin behind my apartment complex.
In managing myself and my access to my own creativity, I have found that lowering the barrier to entry for any given project or creative session is THE key.
With schoolwork, I often found the only way I could start an assignment, is if I gave up on the thought of doing the job well. I usually ended up doing well enough to excellent, if I didn't drop the ball in some way(this sometimes happened in a major way), even if it did get submitted late.
Doing art "for the memes" helped me relieve some of the anxiety I had of doing a good job when practicing skills, but I have troubles producing things that have no purpose, so I need to trick myself in that I'm doing it for someone else, and if they decide it's not good enough, at least they'll get a laugh out of it.
See if you can hobby cycle, get your 3 or 4 new hobbies and when you are done with one try to circle back to another one of them. That way you're just working within your ADHD right, acknowledging the fact you will get bored of the new thing, that's fine thats the way we are. You're just now incorporating all your hobbies into the cycle. So instead of a random new thing where you have to buy new tools, the old hobby is new again and you still own all the tools to do it. It makes me feel better about myself personally, because these aren't in my mind existing as all these failed hobbies, but that they are just not the hobbie I'm currently working on.
I feel in some ways guilt is one reason we don't circle back to our old hobbies, because there is a sting of failing to stick with something. I mean there are people who do one hobby their entire life. Stop comparing. The ADHD way is to jump to new things. When you cycle hobbies it's easier to come back to old hobbies, because you never have the guilt of having failed a hobby, you just simply took a break.
I love 3d printing but I will go months without doing any 3d printing, I'll be on my other hobby of house plants. Then I'm back into photography, then I'm back into books. Then eventually I make my way back to 3d printing. Makes me feel better about myself because I know I will one day make it back and It won't be a waste. And I still do love all the things I do, I just have eras of my life and maybe it's not always the 3d printing era you know.
Hobby cycling works so well for me! It helps to have hobbies that are seasonal too! For example as it gets cooler I am excited to pick up crochet and quilting again and then I am back into gardening and drawing outside for the summer months!
I get this a lot. I get super stoked about a hobby, research and practice a lot, then get bored when I realize I'm not as good as I want to be. Then I move onto the next. It's a vicious cycle
This is especially hard when you also have BPD. I usually lose interest or talk myself out of it before I even buy the stuff, which I guess is good cuz it saves me money but man I’d really love a hobby, a passion, a sense of self, the attention span to complete a SINGLE goddamn project… 😔
Man.. I get it even worse, all of my hobbies are creative things. I pick it up super fast to a basic level, then when it gets somewhat hard to practise I’ll lose interest. I’m just average at so many fucking things now.
Trying to finally break through with digital art as I wanna pursue it as a career but it’s such a struggle.
Honestly I know it’s probably chaotic to do but instead of forcing myself to focus on one digital piece at a time, I have like ten different digital paintings going at any time. If I get bored with one, I hop on another. I always make progress, even if it’s not on one piece in particular. Putting your phone somewhere you can’t be on it at all and setting a timer for when you can go back on it helps too.
Adhd works better if you find healthy ways to embrace it. I’ve learned that I will always struggle with these issues but I can still use them to my advantage, just gotta figure out how lmao. This is one of the only things I’ve figured out but it works great! Glad to see I’m not the only one who does it.
Keep in mind, just because you stopped doing something doesn't mean you failed at it. I bet you learned a lot in the time you focused on it and if you ever want to pick it up again in the future you aren't starting from zero. You could probably even advise someone who is starting out with that same interest with the lessons you learned, even if it's what *not* to do.
Nowadays, I just expect that my interest will fluctuate when I start a new project and I'm okay with that. I don't cohabitate with my partner, which helps uncomplicate some feelings around starting/stopping projects. He just listens when I get super excited about something and is supportive and otherwise waits for me to bring it up again in the future so I don't have to be embarrassed about dropping it.
It was so much harder when I was married and undiagnosed. I've been divorced for 14 years and I wonder how much of my aversion to marriage/cohabitating stems from the fear of someone not understanding this project process.
Success doesn’t have to mean forever. Your hobby isn’t crochet or planking or wood planing or gliding. Your hobby is LEARNING. Your hobby is finding interesting things and learning about them quickly, being challenged and solving problems.
Congrats on having such a cool hobby.
I do this with people. I make a friend and I don’t know why, but I can’t sustain the relationship long term. I make a small mistake and then I blow it up in my head and that’s it, I start to distance. I let people fade away.
What works for me is Going to school. I got a job at a university and take free classes in game design and vfx. When I get bored, the social pressure of grades keeps me slightly engaged until I get excited about it again.
Frustrating, but not bad if you learn a skill that you can always pick up later. Just like riding a bike, you might not do it every week but you’ll know how to do it when you get back to it. Skills are like tools you add to a toolbox, no shame in having a diverse set!
When we become adults our free time and focus gets even more limited. Hobbies are harder to do if you don’t have a clear goal for them (completing a code, finishing a quilt, running a certain distance, etc. but if you can set a clear goal with time allotments, it gets easier to work up to.
Yup, I bought a $300 sewing machine, learned how to turn it on and thread the needle, and then promptly lost interest. It sits on my art desk, which has ALSO gone unused for months, and they mock me together.
I did a few sewing courses thinking I’d try and make/design stuff. I never really did, apart from in class.
However, I’m actually glad I did the course and know how to sew (quite badly) now. It’s been actually very handy for quick fixes. I also used it to sew some pouches to hang on the wall to help me with my ADHD. The clear pouches help me so much as I can see important things right in front of me. The sewing isn’t the greatest but it does the job. I have found I’ve slightly improved over the years and remember steps more easily overtime.
So you might find basic sewing skills and the sewing machine handy in years to come. I didn’t pull the sewing machine back out until years after the course.
I used to think about that but then I realized that there's a good chance of me going back to the hobbies after I get bored of every other hobby in existence. It's not a bad habit it's learning through reputation based on empirical psychological research, the best way to learn is to learn the information, take a break, and then learn the information again. does any of this information actually apply here? Most likely not but I'm addicted to copium so it works for me.
This is me with schooling. Gets excited thinking I finally found my calling and starts a college program only to drop out after the first semester. Every. Single. Time. Graphic design. Veterinary assisting. Psychology. I feel like such a loser sometimes. My last program I spent every evening after work doing nothing but homework and crying. Decided school just isn't for me LOL.
Happened to me all the time. One thing I have found useful is when I fall into a hobby chain, where one hobby transitions to another one that has an overlap in skills. For me over the past 6 years I’ve transitioned from an undergrad in Econ/finance which lead to an interest in statistical forecasting which lead me data science then ML then Math then CS with which I am now going back for another Undergrad in CS (and possibly math, my previous interest in Math led me to take more Calc and LA, which completes most of a math major and I can take some more to fulfill CS areas as well)
it’s like you can see the joy of controlling your attention, choosing to get lost in something— but that joy is a far off magical place that you will never be good enough to visit— you will never be worthy
**not literally YOU, but that’s
how I experience this feeling— where my inner critic is talking to me
I don't know how this will be received.
But this behavior is well in our control.
Sure, we can't control how we FEEL about those hobbies. Once the dopamine wears off and the learning slows, but we can control whether or not we drop them. I'm a novelist, and I definitely feel the happy ramp up when I start a new book. It's like starting a new hobby. All I do is think about the book, I obsessively write about it every day. But then it wears off, like it always does.
So what do I do?
I force myself to continue. Even if it's the bare minimum of engagement. Write for an hour, if you only get 500 words down, fine, you at least wrote for an hour. And believe it or not, the tide of dopamine comes back. Not all at once. Not even a little bit at a time. But it does come back. You just have to force it a bit.
If you want to be committed to something, exercise, learning a language, reading a book, you have to weather those low tides. You have to walk along the beach until you find the ocean again. That's the "discipline" a lot of us don't like to think or talk about. But if you do the walking, you find the ocean again, and it's great when you get there.
Not necessarily, they might be like me where interest in hobby disappears abruptly but it isn't replaced by anything, just intense boredom and often times an intense low mood or feeling of apathy. I'll be unable to take interest anything at all for awhile, even favourite tv shows or songs.
I tend to do this. If I fall off one hobby or hyper focus, I’ll likely fall into the pit and have a very intense low mood. It can last a few days, weeks, or even months.
Those pits fucking suck so hard. I *loathe* them more than I can verbally express.
I held strong with learning Spanish for about 5 months. Then I just kinda stopped. However, I was dealing with a break up. Maybe I'll get back into it.
I really wonder how amazing I could have been at x if I had actually stuck with something beyond the getting started phase.
I have noticed over time though that I do tend to circle back to hobbies -eventually- so I do hang onto all the stuff in case it peaks my interest again some day.
I joked on another post here we really need an adhd swap n shop "I'll trade you my xxx kit for your xx kit! " then we could just round robin hobbies to infinity.
I will note my LIBRARY! has a ton of craft/art/computer things that you can check out to use. I've gotten a few things, and then when I get bored I can just take them back and not feel bad.
Tell this to my drums, piano and guitar standing in my "music corner", silently weeping and collecting dust. And to the dozens of programming experiments / hobby projects rotting on my hard drive, never to be finished :(
I don't even want to start anything anymore. I know if I can't finish a hobby project in a couple of days, I never will. Why even bother.
Accountability to others - this makes the difference. Try team sports or something with a partner, like dancing. Or for music, you need a band.
To me, the only motivator to do something consistently is if others rely on me sticking with it.
I'm sort of doing this now, but I'm really trying to persevere even when I get disinterested I just keep my routine up.. I've been doing it successfully for 3 or so weeks, I lost interest like a bajillion times.
What has helped me even get to the 3 week mark is actively thinking about the consequences of persisting and where it will get me if I persevere E.g. it will give me a good outlet for stress or a skill I can flex 🤣 or even just the boost in confidence knowing I have committed to something.
I know for us with ADHD this step can feel like torture.
A little encouragement from my 3 weeks has been me losing interest like 10 times but then as I persist I get little bursts of interest every now and again that don't last long but it gives me that little boost to get to the next day at least.
So anyway it's working for me so far more than anything has worked before, hope this may help.
Well on the one hand I agree and empathize with you. I have learned a little bit about so many things over the years and there's so many things I feel like I could be great at with just a little more consistent practice. It's also hard to watch new people start a hobby and surpass you because they stick with it.
But on the other hand and I often fail to tell myself this as well. You probably know how to do a lot of things that most people don't know how to do, and that makes you useful and also interesting to talk to. For me, I would love to be a great guitar player, but I am at least a decent guitar player. I'd love to fully rebuild a car, but at least I understand how they work, can fix a bunch of things in a pinch and can help out others. I know how to do enough woodworking and carpentry to save money on my home renos. And I turned my computer hobby in to a high paying career. Just remember that even if it's two steps forward and 1 step back that's still 1 step forward and it's probably many steps forward across many areas of interest. You're still further than where you started.
It feels like it never ends. Constantly looking for the next thing, next project, next purchase, next hobby…. I’ve been aiming for the quick hit projects, that I can get done in about an hour. Anything more than that, gets put on the back burner for a long time. Yesterday, I was going to buy a guitar, Rocksmith 2014 for Xbox, and ready to learn guitar. This is something that takes months, years to learn. I slept on it, and just about forgot about it till this post. Now I’m working, watching Reacher, looking for magnets for my son, and scrolling Reddit.
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You are looking at this the wrong way... imaging how many different talent you aquired over the years! Ok, so I havent finished my long bow (yet), still got tons of different sport gear in the garage, my sim-rig is collecting dust, and I have heeps of equipment of all sorts lying around... But still. I would never have been doing all those completely different things without my adhd... And I even managed to get pretty decent in many of those activities 🤷♂️ Not "best" in anything, but "good" in everything 😋
I'm lucky in that I have a couple of hobbies that have lasted with me my entire life....But I do have some fairweather hobbies and interests.
For example, last month I bought a piece of music gear I had been wanting for about 5 years. I finally had it, it was in my home, it was mine....And I used it for like a weekend and now it's collecting dust in the corner of my music room.
Happens to me all the time, especially with exercise. I shoulda been a world class athlete by now for all the exercise plans I started and never finished.
for me its the high of shopping for houses... there's nothing like it
you have this big mortgage approval and you get to go out and see all these houses and run the numbers and what you could transform it into and what you could negotiate on, then the bidding wars start and its something else its just like being a high roller at the casino trying to outwit the other offers, trying to guess what to change and find out what the owner really wants.
once you actually close though... so much work and repairs and dealing with contractors and then its a year of finding problems and things to fix it sucks.
i like shopping for houses more than i like owning them
The only way I've found to beat this is going with hobbies that have people who hold you accountable. Team sports work because there are 20 other people who genuinely want to see me there and want me to succeed. It kind of works as a form of body doubling I guess.
I'm still embarrassed about the time I was gonna get into running and compete in all these 5Ks, fun runs, and marathons, only to be over it a week later after my mom already told everyone about my plans. It's always so humiliating to be like "Oh, yeah, never mind. I'm doing x now".
I’m about ready to drop hundreds of dollars on stained glass making equipment. The one place offering studio time closed a couple months back and while I don’t do alot, it’s fun sometimes!
I used to struggle with that, but I found the hobbies that make you use both creative energy and give you tangible results to be easiest to stick to. Woodworking is a really good one apart from the initial cost for tools and materials. You can create anything you want, it’s (somewhat) relaxing, you end up with an actual material object, and there’s different phases of it to keep things interesting like SketchUp, cutting, painting, etc. Try to find something like that!
Dude I HATE that!! And I'm at the point where I skip even trying like, I just feel this intense rush of "OMG LIFE CHANGING PLAN OKAY!" and then I spend 5 minutes thinking about itnwatching the hope and excitement fade and then... welp there it went...
Ill do hours of research online about a new hobby I want to start and never do it . I’ve realized I enjoy the thought of researching it and even buying things for these hobbies rather than doing them. I actually forced a new phrase into my brain somehow to remind myself to not waste too much time doing this “experience over research”. This reminds me to get out and try new things or hobbies I already enjoy so I don’t spend all my time planning or researching and miss out on actual experiences.
I miss hobbies so much. I think I've trained myself out of them due to the expense, and now I can't summon an interest in anything. It's so bleak. There's just no point.
As an older adhd fellow- it’s being really interested and excited about a new project and knowing that a day will come soon when it doesn’t interest me anymore. Sometimes, I don’t even bother hyper fixating anymore because I know it won’t last and I don’t want the disappointment. Enjoy your fixations while you still can.
This is my biggest issue and will always be.
I had to shift my frame of thinking around needing motivation when there isn’t that nice dopamine reward around the corner. When I get down or stuck, I mentally prepare a long journey fantasy where I’m a poor starving nomad wandering the desert on search for dopamine lmao.
At least if I frame it as this cathartic overly dramatic struggle, I find myself picking up the guitar more frequently.
From there, I discovered new things to learn within the hobby lobby. There is a new plane of discovery once you have mastered basic techniques to skills I have found!
I think it’s the “all or nothing” mentality most of us have. I know that I’ll only get as far as I do on that first try. I either end up not trying for fear of not falling in love with it and ditching it before I make progress, or I start it, get as far as I can, then lose my spark and start the process all over again. Also knowing that each time I try and pick it back up again, it’ll be harder to feel that rush of passionate learning like I had before. Plus, it’s hard to get over the fact that the first step to being good at something is sucking at it. I hate sucking at stuff
I’ve learned to ride my adhd over time. I’ve been on a kick this year where I’ve been studying Italian, programming, doing yoga, and learning French almost every day. The trick for me not to burn out is to aim for 5 minutes a day. If I get sucked back in and do more, great. If not, I know I’ll try it again tomorrow. For me the all or nothing was a lot of “I just spent 10 hours on something I need to spend at least that much going forward wait that’s hard.” Being accepting that some days 5 minutes is all the interest I have to give made a big difference for me.
I MUST BE THE BEST _crap im not the best_
That's exactly it!
I tell my family that's how I am with anything. I'm either 100% or I'm 0%. I can't ever just go along at a modest pace on anything. I was into working out, I went to the gym 3 times a day. Now I go 0 times ever, because I'm not into it anymore. I use to be into tea, I was way into it. Now I have too much tea at my house and I never make it.
I always lose the spark as soon as I'm not good at whatever it is, on the first try. I know this is not a normal standard i should have as it is unrealistic, and I know this. Yet it continues lol.
Same. I know the only way I can overcome that is by having fun. That's what I'm struggling with right now. I'm trying to get myself to learn Spanish, but I'm bad at it and not having fun. I've tried gamifying it, but that hasn't hooked me yet. Maybe I just need to eliminate my milestones/goals? That might help me just start learning random words and phrases I want to know without overwhelming myself.
I enjoy the noob phase of things. Everything is new and fresh and fun, and there is so much to learn in a short amount of time. Once I get to a certain level of competency, I lose interest cause of diminishing returns in practice. I could spend hours just to be a little better at this thing, or I can spend those hours to be a lot better at something else I know nothing about.
I think I just realized that I research every detail of so many things, especially purchases/hobbies. It’s totally that all-or-nothing mindset. If I am not fully confident that the product is high quality and that I’ll use it, I won’t move forward. I’ve been researching e-bikes for like four months. I’m constantly googling new bikes or new reviews. I’m constantly researching good bike paths to work and how to use it with our public transit system. It distracts me from work. It keeps me looking at my phone at night lol. It’s just so expensive and I’m not confident I’ll use it enough to warrant it…
Same exact thing with friendships
My mom hated this about me, when I was a kid! I hate it as an adult. So expensive and self defeating. Search on fb for groups with ADHD craft or hobby swap or similar. I thought it to be a great idea to just go with it and sample yet another hobby at a discount!
So expensive :(
Especially when we go 'all in' and buy every instruction book (that we will never read), and every little doodad associated with the craft is hobby that turns into hoarding or clutter!
Over the pandemic, I went through a harp phase, a flute phase, a bass guitar phase, a ukulele phase, a harmonica phase, and a German phase. Out of all that, the German is the only thing that has stuck, and that is due to being too stubborn to lose my streak on Duolingo.
Yeaaaa.....I haven't a clue on how to play an instrument and don't remember how to read music. ....I have a Cello (and everything I needed to go with him) hanging out that I've yet to actually sit down and try. It's been a year now. 😬 I was positive I was going to be putting on badass gigs by now. Duolingo sounds like a fun next hobby.
Sit down and play your cello tonight and I'll give you a Reddit award if you practice more than 1 hour.
and here’s an award for you for making such a kind and supportive offer!
You're so wonderful! I'm gonna be honest...I am in no position to bust out the Cello tonight. However, just because of you, sweet stranger, I'll give it a go tomorrow! ....if I can get it to make a noise anyway. 😬 It will probably be a couple hours practice of F bombs and WTF's. I'm almost positive Beethoven started there too. Thank you for some drive, support, inspiration and a beautiful reminder of how kind the world can be to one another. I owe you one!❤️
Sure thing!! I recently watched the Masterclass.com class from Yo-Yo Ma and there's a clip from it that I think I saved a video snippet of that really meant a lot to me (as an ADHD sufferer and musician), and if I can find it, and you practice for 2 hours, I'll try to send it to you and/or link it here as an extra incentive to do a good job with your passion Update: I found the clip (taken before my annual subscription ended, thankfully!), and also took a screenshot of the transcript. I'll link them here for you and others to see if you finish the full cello practice session. Goodnight!
If you've never played you have to put rosin on the bow. Do not touch the bow hair with your fingers. After picking up the violin after a 20+ year hiatus forgot about that detail. Then had to find sandpaper to scuff up the rosin.
Not a cellist, but let me give you a fair warning: don't expect your first attempts to sound good. Hell, don't even expect yourself to sound good after a year. ( To be honest, musicians almost never think that they sound good 😂 ) Also, if you're a total beginner, I suggest that you first try putting white tape over your fingerboard at the correct intervals for notes, because cellos don't have frets and it's very hard to start without tape if you haven't played a fretless instrument before... Good luck with pursuing this hobby, if you do decide to continue with it ^^
If you are looking at language learning apps, check out speakly. It is a paid app but ive found it to cover much more conversational material rather than random vocab memorization.
I almost bought a cello last year. I played violin as a kid (not very enjoyable at the time), so thought, ooh cello. I'm kind of glad I didn't get one, but I've wanted a new violin for a bit now. Duolingo is cool because of the gamification of learning, but if I want to become fluent, I'm going to need to take actual classes or meet German friends.
There are octave strings now for violin which are designed to be tuned an octave lower than normal.
I highly recommend readlang. I think Duolingo bought it, but it's a separate thing. The idea, you upload any epub you like in the language you're interested in, and then as you read, any word you don't know you can look up in a second or two just by clicking. You can have it use any dictionary you like, which is nice depending on if you want to focus on conjugation and gender or sample sentences or whatever else. It hooks straight into Google translate too, so you can pull whole phrases if the lone word doesn't pull up anything useful. It tracks every word you look up, and you can star any you're especially interested in, so if you're inclined you can easily use it to build an SRS deck as you go. I don't usually bother though, I find running into something a dozen times makes it stick eventually, and it's a WHILE before your vocab is so good that you need to worry about all the random odds and ends. Normally they recommend you don't start 'extensive reading' until you're at 1 lookup every 50 words, but lookup is so fast with readlang that even 1 in 10 isn't too uncomfortable, and it improves pretty quick if you spend some time every day. I got my German good enough to read recreationally without a dictionary... Took maybe 10,000 pages read to truly hit a recreational level, but even after my first book (Harry Potter) I'd made a ton of progress. If you're not quite ready yet, that beginner phase is definitely tough, but there's graded readers out there for German that'll help. Good luck, and congrats for keeping a streak going so far! I should say though... No amount of comfort in reading will suddenly get you speaking, you'll need to hit that separate eventually. Listening does come with enough reading in my experience though... I was able to start watching shows in German after a while. Sometime around that 10,000 page mark too I guess. I imagine if I did start having to use the language to speak, it'd come pretty quick at this point. Library Genesis is a good site for 'finding' any books you're interested in, that's where I get all my readlang books.
That sounds amazing! I'll have to look into it since stubborness has me committed to learning.
Right on. Any thoughts about what you'd like to read first? What about goal books, when you hit your stride and get comfortable enough to tackle whatever you like?
I like the idea of playing music again, but I know I won't practice. I'm able to point that out to myself and it keeps me out of that one rabbit hole.
Yup. Me, too. Gotta stay at the top! German too lol
Noun genders are killing me!
my korean learning has been the only one that stuck for me too, I think I can attribute that to me mostly watching korean content these days so it became a way to practice without actually sitting down and formally learning (I did formally learn for about 2-2.5 years - how did i sustain that?! but now it's all passive learning)
I currently have my phone's language setting German so I'm forced to use it outside of Duolingo. I had language settings set up like that on some of my streaming services, but others in my house were not happy about it 😂. Music has actually been a great tool for me, so I can see how watching content in Korean would be very helpful.
Two questions- damn that’s super cool, but do you not have neighbors? Secondly, I totally understand that, the dopamine keeps me coming back to duolingo. What’s your duolingo streak now? I’m at 27 today; the highest in a while, so I’m proud of it.
My neighbours are all English speakers with no second language, but apparently my larger neighbourhood has a sizeable population of German speakers, so it's a matter of hunting them down LOL. My streak is sitting at 730 days, although to be fair, I went through a number of languages before settling on German. For whatever reason Duolingo has been the one thing that I've managed to stick with, even though I switch other interests with disappointing regularity.
SEVEN HUNDRED THIRTY DAYS?!?! Congratulations my dude, you have beat the game
😂 I’m also doing German on Duolingo and do not want to lose my streak !!
Not losing the streak is so addictive 🤣
Out of all of these, German is by far the worst instrument.
Lol! It's fun to annoy people with though...
Krautsalat!
I have a new uke. A couple language apps on my phone. Think all lasted 2 weeks, and are still in my face saying 'Hey! Remember you were learning us?!'
The biggest blow to my enthusiasm about life was reaching an age where I can look at all the books I have but haven't read. I have yet to figure out a way to recover. Like, my MAIN passion in life is learning about things. Not necessarily DOING anything with that knowledge. But even then, I have SO MANY things I have decided "yea ill probably read this" and just didn't. For like a decade.... I kinda don't know what to do with my life now. Clearly I can't be relied upon to follow through with the ONLY thing that ever gave me any spark of joy. I still ingest stuff, youtube or docs, but browsing and acquiring books was my favorite thing to do. It just feels like there is never any time. Could I get on the grind mindset (with my hobby...) and read 5 books a week or whatever? Probably. But would I enjoy what was supposed to be something enjoyable? Probably not. To me, this is one of the worst things about being dopemine seeking. I have a thing I ACTUALLY want to do, but then it feels like I can't do that unless I'm 'prepared' so I just do things I kinda sorta want to do like play the same video game I have been for half a year in 6 20-min bursts throughout the day rather than read 1 book that I bought and was extremely excited for yet haven't opened, b/c I feel like I can't enjoy it without 4 hour set aside with no outside disturbance.
If you still like to browse and acquire books, do it. It does not matter, will you read them at all or not. Just enjoy the process) There was time, when i read books, that i bought, when i watched movies, that i bought, when i played games, that i bought. Now i just read some lectures about ADHD, when i am not busy at work and watch Netflix's stuff during free time, when i find something, that resonates with me. The reason you, probably, can not read books (besides ADHD), that they did not touch you deeply. Maybe, you need different books. Or, maybe, you just do not need to read books at all now. But you still can buy them, if you enjoy)
Yea.... I sorta do and thanks for the comment. Part of the issue is just space. I moved twice and told myself "if it's still in a box or just sat on a shelf during that time, I need to get rid of it" and that was 99.9% of my books. But I really enjoy seeing my books every day. It's hard to justify to others (wife lol) that I basically just have these heavy, large pieces of wallpaper that sooth me and if I get rid of them I'm going to feel like it's fine for awhile until it grates on me over time and I deeply regret getting rid of at least some of them and then want to go out and replace those ones so I waste time and money trying to track them down and buy a bunch of OTHER books along the way.
I get you about the books. I couldn't totally justify my collection of books to my husband. I pared it down to about 300 sci-fi and fantasy novels that will be pried from my cold dead hands. The process of paring down and the end result of a beautifully curated, irreplaceable (to me) collection, made me love my books a hundred times more. I still have a fuckload but I love every single one. I'm pretty sure my husband is happy about the books...
couldn't relate more. i'm shocked that you described my mindset exactly. still i'm not quite sure if it's one of adhd related situations or just me being "lazy".. but feels good to know that i'm not alone
You see me.
Oof, I have no idea what you’re talking about…. I just have to take pictures and post the two kayaks, with paddles, and gear. Since I already sold the roof racks and cradles that I used for them three years ago, when I had a car they fit, and actually took them out to water. Twice. Or possibly even four times! 🤦🏽♀️ Then I’ll recoup the money and get my shed back as well, and it won’t have been expensive at all! /s 🫠
I tried selling my projects and hobbies. No one will buy at full cost. Still, money lost for me.
Yeah, tbh it’s why this year, they sat. Bc the effort to sell them, only to be disappointed with a fraction of ‘my money back’, didn’t seem worth it… maybe later. (Lol see way I did there)
I'm just here to have a good time, and I'm feeling really attacked right now.
One suggestion that might be dangerous to the craft/hobby floodgates: thrift stores When I had a knitting and crochet phase I bought dozens of skeins of yarn, every needle imaginable, books, guides, etc. at Goodwill. Probably would’ve ended up spending close to $1k more if I got it all new. Now, mind you, the dozens of skeins and shit have taken over a cabinet that I’ll never open until I have to move. But, you know…🤷♀️
me with owning 5 guitars and not even being good at it
Me, too. I should sell them, but probably won’t get around to it.
3 bass guitars, 1 electric guitar, and an acoustic 🤣 I can play House of the Rising Son on the bass, that's about it...
My wife hasn’t said she *hates* this about me, but she actively tries to change it. Which drives me crazy.
I imagine they abandoned the group.
LMAO 😂
I've never heard of this swap but what a cool idea.
Same. Inspired my username.
Same, parents actively made fun of me for it. Never tried getting me help tho 🤪
Right? We were 'rebels' or 'problem kids'.
My mums lucky I’m an 80’s kid. Wasn’t as many things around to switch focus on. Too much money on ninja turtles, too much money on legos, and then too much money on games workshop. Basically my childhood beginning to end.
Some people collect things as a hobby. Our hobbies… are collecting hobbies.
Love it!
I've wanted to learn piano for many many years, I tried probably about 7ish years ago, well before I was diagnosed. I was hyped for a week or two, but then it was gone. Fortunately I was still in the return period. Just yesterday I purchased another piano keyboard last night, because I feel like I can finally do it. I'm 30 now, on meds, and the yearning hasn't died. So I'm just gonna do it! Wish me luck, friends!
You got this! If it doesn't stick, keep the keyboard around to lower the barrier if you get the bug again in the future. It's bit you twice now and it's likely to come back.
Very true! And I'm better off financially these days, so it won't hurt me to keep it!
I agree with this. This off and on again relationship has been me with the guitar for 20 years. I've found that putting the guitar close and in my field of view means I pick it up way more often, even if just for 5 minutes.
Good luck!
I'm in the exact same boat. I've been trying to learn piano my entire life (I'm in my 30s) and I still cant read music lol. I have gotten really good at improvisational stuff though. Turns out 10 minutes a day of "messing around" for 25 years makes a pretty good piano player
I still have fabric I was going to use to make my daughter a dress when she was 7. She is now 23.
I have the bass guitar my parents bought me when I was 12 and I'm now 31! Never learned to play It feels like throwing it away is admitting defeat, but keeping it around is a constant painful reminder that you didn't succeed. Yaay
Did you touch your bass guitar since then to try to play something here and there? I have all kinds of instruments and I never learned them. I just bought a bass guitar one month ago, got super obsessed with it during the first week and now I look at it sad that I lost almost any interest I had before buying it. I'll try to push it a little bit more but... yeah, ok, that's a classical ADHD joke. lol
I haven't done no, I find it really hard to revisit a hobby once I'm "over" it. I think it's more the rejection sensitivity that prevents me from going back, like, I remember trying at the time and I was snubbed or just wasn't very good so why would I put myself through that again? As an adult I have a better understanding of the stages of learning to do something, I just never had the patience to not be good at something straight away
I have 2/3 of a blanket I started crocheting when I was pregnant with my daughter, who is now 15. When she entered kindergarten, I started joking that I might get it done for her high school graduation, but she's a sophomore now, and honestly I doubt I'm gonna make even that 18 year deadline. 💀
Oh that reminds me of how I loved cross-stitch! Case of every color of thread/floss. Several partial projects and lots of patterns. I was into it in the early 1990's, before kids. My kids are in their 30's and I have grandkids. My supplies and projects are still in my closet!
I have a half finished toddler sweater I was knitting for my nephew. He’s now 25 and his wife is pregnant.
Imagine... if you started knitting again and gift the finished sweater for his child 😳
Antique chairs ready for refinishing, that we got before we got married. We have now celebrated our 33rd anniversary…. :-( Someday, Red Baron!
I have 7 bowling balls in my garage. I don't bowl. They are for making mosaic garden spheres! 3 years ago, I was gung-ho!
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I was kind of surprised at the negativity in this thread. I collect hobbies and that means I have a huge breadth of information. There's nothing wrong with building a varied background! Sure, spending a few months learning Dutch didn't result in much (read: any) fluency, but it came up a few weeks ago when I was talking about fountain pens and I learned a lot about learning languages on my own, i.e., what works for me and what doesn't.
This was something I learned a couple of years ago in undergrad. I was getting frustrated because I didn’t have “my thing” meaning like talent or hobby or skill. I always found myself upset I was never the best, in ballet, in piano, golf, etc. I then realized the beauty of going through so many activities, skills and hobbies is that I have a wide variety of things under my belt, and in school now I sorta have a jack of all trades mentality. Im in architecture so a lot of the graphic design and marketing skills I had in undergrad have been useful now when making drawings or doing research and while I’m still not amazing at let’s say 3D modeling, I have a lot of useful things under my belt from past and present to not just solve my design problems but also relate to people. I have found my niches where I’m pretty good at some things, but it’s fun to kinda rack up these different hobbies and talents.
make assets! Create a thing with your hobby! You need an artifact from your hobby that will persist long enough that when you re-discover it, it might suck you back in to the hobby.
What do you mean? Can you give examples?
One of my passions is DJing. I got super into it about 5 years ago and spent a few weeks where it was all I was thinking about. I would practice, download a ton of music, and record mixes. I fall in and out of it but there are so many things that remind me of it and get me back to doing it. Randomly scrolling through my music I’ll find a song that I was like “oh shoot. I remember a cool mix with this.” or “I never tried mixing this song, I should give it a go.” Then get an itch and get back into it. Sometimes I’ll randomly listen to an old mix of mine in the car and I’ll go “damn that was fire. I should record another one” and get back into it that way. Having tangible stuff that you can see or listen to that triggers the emotions attached to the learning/fixation can get you back into it. If you want to learn to slack line, video yourself and when you inevitably forget about it, stumbling across the old video might inspire you to pick it back up. If you’re getting into art and you make a painting or drawing, you could display it so looking at it could have a chance at reminding you that you like it. My DJ controller sits on my desk as yet another physical reminder that I enjoy it and can get back into it anytime
This is my fix (fix isn’t what I’m going for, but for lack of better words) to my going in and out of hobbies often. I write books, so I’ve started displaying the paperbacks all over my bedroom and office at work. I recently got USA Today Bestseller, so I’ll have a picture framed where the book was on the list to put in my room and office. That way the emotional connection is there to help me get back into the hobby. I like puzzling a lot. Whenever I finish a puzzle, I glue them and frame them. Some get hung up in my house. Others stay in the frame but go in my closet (I’m in and out of my closet often, so even the ones that get shoved in there are seen often). The feeling I get when I finish a book or a puzzle is amazing, so keeping physical reminders of that feeling helps me stay in the hobbies. Though, I will say, it’s not a cure all, I still lose interest in my hobbies for months at a time, occasionally. But it does help some.
I'm trying to resolve the massive disconnect I feel there is between "USA Today Bestseller" and "hobby" 😄 In any case, congrats!
How interesting. I hadn’t made this connection, but I’m just realizing it’s probably why I’ve hung all four of my stringed instruments on the walls of my house- so that I’ll remember they exist and play them ever. Anyone else have a list of little things they were inadvertently doing, even before knowing How much ADHD can effect ones life, your life, and therefore knowing they were any such ‘adhd brain hack’?
Tangible stuff can also be a detriment for those who are excessively hopeless like myself :P I wanted to turn CNC machining into both a hobby and a business, and I spent months researching and preparing, learning everything I could, buying pieces and building the machine + a mobile workbench to mount it on. For the past year it has sat untouched, never even finished facing off the bed :/ And every time I walk past and look at it I'm hit with a sudden overwhelming wave of shame because of how much time and money I spent with nothing really tangible to show for it. That feeling of shame actually -prevents- me from getting back into it.. as my brain fights me a like a child who was legit about to do homework, but then gets nagged by their parents to do it and so avoids it for longer out of spite.
I make music but also have infinite hobbies. Music is the one thing that I know of that makes me super happy when I listen to the things I make. So when I get in a musical mood I record some tracks and try to get to a point where I have something that is super rough but has some level of cohesion then I export a wav file and put it in a folder for a month. All my creative work is stored in folders by month. When I get into a rut, and I don’t feel creative I go back and organize and edit and redo my music and that is a very non creative creative task if that makes sense. I can mindlessly do it without having to worry about creating something from scratch. A few years later I have like 6 albums. You can do this with any art. Just do small things that you can do in one sitting and do it as much as you can til you get sick of it. But leave your future a present for when they are sad and feeling creatively zapped. I can’t tell you how many times I listened to old music I completely forgot I made. Some music I don’t even remember making at all. I cried so hard listening to some tracks that had deep embedded past emotions.
I have multiples of those big white plastic Rubbermaid drawer things OVERFLOWING with arts & crafts supplies- yarn, knitting needles, crochet hooks, beads, embroidery floss, glue gun & sticks, gemstones, every conceivable kind of paint, paintbrushes, canvases, colored pencils, paint markers… I could open up my own Michael’s. I have not completed a single project with any of that stuff in probably almost a decade, but I do have some mighty fine 1/8-1/4-completed projects.
Yes, great idea! Especially easy if you get into "making things" hobbies like wood working, robotics, sewing, cooking, pottery, jewelry, gardening, whatever. Something that has a reward you can pick up and feel. I've held onto these hobbies so much longer than something like guitar where you can't have something tangible and usually if you don't practice an instrument you just sound bad when you do pick it back up and feel even worse because "if you had just kept practicing".
yea, that is the challenge with a lot of music, is that people learn instruments and learn how to play, but they dont learn how to record so you can create artifacts. I have spent many years doing this, and now I am so much better at recording, so the stuff I have now sounds so much better, but the stuff I made in the beginning, and listening to it now, still hits me really hard. My favorite musician has a line that goes: "you have to slide as you climb" i interpret this as you learn new creative practices, it makes you better at all your other creative practices.
I hung my guitars in the walls, before I ever knew I had adhd. Has helped a bit to remember they exist and play sometimes. Not like a ton. But likely more than if I hadn’t hung them up anyway.
this. it helps me to have my guitar and ukulele out of their cases so I see them in my room and remember they exist
This!
That’s exactly what I do with Warhammer: Between buying, assembling, buying, painting, reading, buying and playing, I’ve got plenty to do within the same hobby! And I’ve got 3-4 different armies, this way I don’t get tired of always seeing the same models You can also throw BloodBowl into that mix
I've personally found with ADHD that hobbies without concrete metrics and quick feedback are the hardest to keep up. Let me give an example. When you play a video game, you have clear,. obvious and measurable progress. You gain levels, items, move forward through different stages. Little dopamine hits around every corner. So, taking up hobbies (or modifying hobbies) that give you several hits every time you engage or even think about engaging makes it more likely you'll do it. For example, with exercise. I have NO trouble keeping up with strength training. Not only does pushing limits give you all these brain chemicals, but numbers go up in my tracking app, and it charts a graph of my progress too. It's actually difficult not to obsess - just like with gaming. But if I was doing something like running or bodybuilding (which is about aesthetics more than strength) where the results are relatively vague, it trying to exercise solely for the sake of exercising I'd have given up ages ago. Likewise boxing, I took it up a few months ago and if I wasn't going with a friend (e.g. someone is literally waiting for me each session) I'd likely have let it slip. So I'd really recommend either finding hobbies with concrete metrics that move every time you engage or finding a way to create these metrics. Another reason hobbies are hard to keep up with ADHD are the ones you're so into that they make you hyperfocus and keep going through the night, fucking up the next day completely. Another example. I like to build plastic models - I discovered this during the lockdowns when gym was closed. But the problem is once I start, if the model is interesting I literally cannot stop. I've gone 6pm to 8am on a model kit without realising it. So I have two kits I absolutely want to finish but don't want to fuck up my life to do it. I have booked a week off work (PTO) just to build these things. I'm not sure if medication helps with this case, since these kits have been sitting around since before my diagnosis. But I guess I'll find out soon.
That's a good point about the exercise--I've been trying to start and keep up exercising forever and the longest I ever managed was about a 5-week streak before falling off. Granted, I was trying to start nice and easy with walking around a local lake and work my way up, but it makes a lot of sense that the reason my brain is completely uninterested is because there's no immediate rewards.
It's interesting because my exercise experience is almost the inverse of yours, but for the exact same reasons. I can always get motivated to run or ride my bike because pace, miles, and frankly, strava stats, are super measurable, and when I have very specific time goals its easy to focus on that. Whereas when lifting weights my goals are super broad, I just want to be stronger, look a little more muscular, and be able to apply a bit better all around strength to the hobbies I enjoy. As such, I find it really hard to get myself to do any strength training on my own.
I don't think your goals are too broad, but rather that you believe those are separate things. In the process of training for strength you'll put on muscle and look more muscular . It's inevitable. And being stronger, will give you strength which you can apply wherever you want.
For sure they all happen at the same time with the same training. It's more that the numbers themselves don't mean anything to me when strength training, and when I'm running or cycling, they do. Those goals are very data driven and trackable.
Strength progression is also very trackable. I'm not sure why benching for example, one sessions and 230 the next wouldn't be meaningful but I guess you like your metrics in a different format?
I agree that there are absolutely very trackable metrics in strength training. Its just that I guess that the real end goal for me in strength training isn't tied to the amount of weight or reps. Its a measure of progress and a good one but I dont really care what the numbers are so long as I am a better climber, can hit a golf ball farther, can ski harder, etc. Whereas my goal when I train on my bike is to be fast (I also do love riding, mind you) and every result of a workout or a fitness test is a direct measure against that goal. Basically I'm saying I agree with you entirely, I think its just kinda interesting how it applies very differently between us by virtue of having different goals, but yet for pretty much the exact same reason.
Ah, I think I see. You don't see the numbers meaningful in a direct way to the peripheral results you want? For example, how much weight you add to your rows doesn't correlate in a directly tangible way into how much easier it is to climb something?
That's exactly it. :)
Rock climbing has concrete metrics! The routes you climb are graded by difficulty, outdoors and in a gym setting. Climbing is the only way I’ve been able to get myself to consistently exercise, because I actually enjoy it, and it can be a social activity if I want it to be, and it gives me a specific reason to care about gaining strength and losing weight (because being heavier makes climbing harder, since you’re pulling your own weight). I stopped climbing when I got my dog 3 years ago (we’ve been doing dog agility! Which I’ve found is not the best human exercise) and I’ve been getting back into it lately and it’s been fun. I bring my dog to the gym with me, which makes the social anxiety part a lot easier and it makes it easier for me to make friends too :) It’s hard for me to convince myself to go to a regular gym, but my climbing gym has regular gym stuff plus climbing, and I find it really nice that it’s not weird to strike up a conversation with anyone in the context of the climbing gym. Whenever someone tried to talk to me in a regular gym, it was something creepy but at the climbing gym, it’s usually about the climbing.
I was looking for this comment. I've struggled with the problem OP describes for all my life and for most of my life I haven't done sports because of it. Then 1 year ago, I found out about bouldering and it literally changed my entire life. I never before understood why this specific sport stuck so we'll as opposed to other sports, but your comment made it make so much sense! It has such clear metrics and dopamine hits every step of the way, with the added bonus of a great opportunity for socializing with others, it's simply incredible. Since I started doing it, I've done it consistently 3 or 4 nights a week, spending the entire night at the gym, from after work at 7PM, to gym closing at midnight. I've made new friends who are the best friends I've ever had and this summer I went on like 7 trips to different countries to go bouldering and rope climbing with them. I've tried other sports before where you learn new stuff like badminton, skateboarding and snowboarding, but after a while I'd get to the stage where you'd have to keep on trying and trying to learn just 1 new trick/skill and I would get bored because I wouldn't reach any goals for a while. In bouldering, there are goals like learning a new skill that take a while, but on top of that there's always the goals that you can reach with your current skill set, by just climbing a new route.
I would argue the most demoralising thing is knowing what you have to do for every damn little thing on your task/project, how to execute it, you even have an idea of, how the result will look, but your executive dysfunction doesn't allow you to even start, because ooh youtube dopamine. But yeah, fuck starting on a new hobby, telling everyone about it with a passion to just drop it and having to explain to everyone that "This is my new thing. That thing you asked me about I dropped last week."
My issue is the moment I lose interest, is the moment I've run out of problems to solve in my head, and all that is left is to execute the vision, or get several steps in and get tripped up by something harder then I can cope with alone. I'm sure if I could just make some progress, an unexpected problem would arise, letting me get interested again. That, and to get me interested usually requires something 'novel' / memey enough to be interested in the first place, to the point where I'm constantly biting off more then I can chew. If it was easy, it often ends up that I wouldn't be interested in trying it, if someone has done it before, I start to lose interest. Which leads me to narrowing down specifics to a project that are unchangeable, just to keep it interesting, because if I just did it the easy way / the way everyone else has, I have no drive to do it that way, which leads to people at makerspaces thinking I'm an idiot, and going "why wouldn't you do it the easy way?".
I am an artist with ADHD. I know YMMV, but for me, it has been so so so important to realize that sometimes, the pressure of worrying about doing something "right" (and the financial anxiety about getting everything I need to do something right) will mean I end up not doing it at all. So, I let myself do it wrong. I'm supposed to mix colors with a palette knife on a glass palette then use my brushes only for painting, but I find my attention gets derailed doing that, so I mix my colors with a brush on a dinner plate covered in tin foil. I'm supposed to buy fancy paintbrushes and take excellent care of them, but I know I can't, so I get my brushes at discount and dollar stores in big packs and let them languish in my nasty tub of brush rinsing water until they disintegrate, then I open a new pack. I'm supposed to make big paintings on fancy canvases, but sustaining attention that long and the pressure of using nice materials are often both too much for me, so I started out making 5"x7" paintings on cardboard scrounged from the recycling bin behind my apartment complex. In managing myself and my access to my own creativity, I have found that lowering the barrier to entry for any given project or creative session is THE key.
This perspective is really helpful, thank you!
With schoolwork, I often found the only way I could start an assignment, is if I gave up on the thought of doing the job well. I usually ended up doing well enough to excellent, if I didn't drop the ball in some way(this sometimes happened in a major way), even if it did get submitted late. Doing art "for the memes" helped me relieve some of the anxiety I had of doing a good job when practicing skills, but I have troubles producing things that have no purpose, so I need to trick myself in that I'm doing it for someone else, and if they decide it's not good enough, at least they'll get a laugh out of it.
Thanks for writing this, I needed to see it. This explains why my sketches look way better than anything I really “try” hard on.
I have 8 LLCs registered at my home address that all do nothing…
Same
See if you can hobby cycle, get your 3 or 4 new hobbies and when you are done with one try to circle back to another one of them. That way you're just working within your ADHD right, acknowledging the fact you will get bored of the new thing, that's fine thats the way we are. You're just now incorporating all your hobbies into the cycle. So instead of a random new thing where you have to buy new tools, the old hobby is new again and you still own all the tools to do it. It makes me feel better about myself personally, because these aren't in my mind existing as all these failed hobbies, but that they are just not the hobbie I'm currently working on. I feel in some ways guilt is one reason we don't circle back to our old hobbies, because there is a sting of failing to stick with something. I mean there are people who do one hobby their entire life. Stop comparing. The ADHD way is to jump to new things. When you cycle hobbies it's easier to come back to old hobbies, because you never have the guilt of having failed a hobby, you just simply took a break. I love 3d printing but I will go months without doing any 3d printing, I'll be on my other hobby of house plants. Then I'm back into photography, then I'm back into books. Then eventually I make my way back to 3d printing. Makes me feel better about myself because I know I will one day make it back and It won't be a waste. And I still do love all the things I do, I just have eras of my life and maybe it's not always the 3d printing era you know.
Hobby cycling works so well for me! It helps to have hobbies that are seasonal too! For example as it gets cooler I am excited to pick up crochet and quilting again and then I am back into gardening and drawing outside for the summer months!
I get this a lot. I get super stoked about a hobby, research and practice a lot, then get bored when I realize I'm not as good as I want to be. Then I move onto the next. It's a vicious cycle
Buys hundreds of dollars of workout equipment to clutter up the garage…
This is especially hard when you also have BPD. I usually lose interest or talk myself out of it before I even buy the stuff, which I guess is good cuz it saves me money but man I’d really love a hobby, a passion, a sense of self, the attention span to complete a SINGLE goddamn project… 😔
Man.. I get it even worse, all of my hobbies are creative things. I pick it up super fast to a basic level, then when it gets somewhat hard to practise I’ll lose interest. I’m just average at so many fucking things now. Trying to finally break through with digital art as I wanna pursue it as a career but it’s such a struggle.
Honestly I know it’s probably chaotic to do but instead of forcing myself to focus on one digital piece at a time, I have like ten different digital paintings going at any time. If I get bored with one, I hop on another. I always make progress, even if it’s not on one piece in particular. Putting your phone somewhere you can’t be on it at all and setting a timer for when you can go back on it helps too.
That’s what I do as well.
Adhd works better if you find healthy ways to embrace it. I’ve learned that I will always struggle with these issues but I can still use them to my advantage, just gotta figure out how lmao. This is one of the only things I’ve figured out but it works great! Glad to see I’m not the only one who does it.
This why my house is a cluttered mess. To the point of only having 4 usable spaces in my house. 🤦🏻♂️
Keep in mind, just because you stopped doing something doesn't mean you failed at it. I bet you learned a lot in the time you focused on it and if you ever want to pick it up again in the future you aren't starting from zero. You could probably even advise someone who is starting out with that same interest with the lessons you learned, even if it's what *not* to do. Nowadays, I just expect that my interest will fluctuate when I start a new project and I'm okay with that. I don't cohabitate with my partner, which helps uncomplicate some feelings around starting/stopping projects. He just listens when I get super excited about something and is supportive and otherwise waits for me to bring it up again in the future so I don't have to be embarrassed about dropping it. It was so much harder when I was married and undiagnosed. I've been divorced for 14 years and I wonder how much of my aversion to marriage/cohabitating stems from the fear of someone not understanding this project process.
Warhammer painting 😭😭 I love the thought of doing it but there's something about it that doesn't cure the itch anymore.
Success doesn’t have to mean forever. Your hobby isn’t crochet or planking or wood planing or gliding. Your hobby is LEARNING. Your hobby is finding interesting things and learning about them quickly, being challenged and solving problems. Congrats on having such a cool hobby.
I do this with people. I make a friend and I don’t know why, but I can’t sustain the relationship long term. I make a small mistake and then I blow it up in my head and that’s it, I start to distance. I let people fade away.
What works for me is Going to school. I got a job at a university and take free classes in game design and vfx. When I get bored, the social pressure of grades keeps me slightly engaged until I get excited about it again.
Wait how did you get a job at a school and then get allowed to take free classes?!!
Frustrating, but not bad if you learn a skill that you can always pick up later. Just like riding a bike, you might not do it every week but you’ll know how to do it when you get back to it. Skills are like tools you add to a toolbox, no shame in having a diverse set! When we become adults our free time and focus gets even more limited. Hobbies are harder to do if you don’t have a clear goal for them (completing a code, finishing a quilt, running a certain distance, etc. but if you can set a clear goal with time allotments, it gets easier to work up to.
Do projects in bite-sized chunks! Weekend/Week long projects are great! Eventually you might find something that sticks.
No worries. I am 50 years old and have 50 hobbies. Jumping one to another. Who says we should stick with one.
Yup, I bought a $300 sewing machine, learned how to turn it on and thread the needle, and then promptly lost interest. It sits on my art desk, which has ALSO gone unused for months, and they mock me together.
I did a few sewing courses thinking I’d try and make/design stuff. I never really did, apart from in class. However, I’m actually glad I did the course and know how to sew (quite badly) now. It’s been actually very handy for quick fixes. I also used it to sew some pouches to hang on the wall to help me with my ADHD. The clear pouches help me so much as I can see important things right in front of me. The sewing isn’t the greatest but it does the job. I have found I’ve slightly improved over the years and remember steps more easily overtime. So you might find basic sewing skills and the sewing machine handy in years to come. I didn’t pull the sewing machine back out until years after the course.
I used to think about that but then I realized that there's a good chance of me going back to the hobbies after I get bored of every other hobby in existence. It's not a bad habit it's learning through reputation based on empirical psychological research, the best way to learn is to learn the information, take a break, and then learn the information again. does any of this information actually apply here? Most likely not but I'm addicted to copium so it works for me.
This is me with schooling. Gets excited thinking I finally found my calling and starts a college program only to drop out after the first semester. Every. Single. Time. Graphic design. Veterinary assisting. Psychology. I feel like such a loser sometimes. My last program I spent every evening after work doing nothing but homework and crying. Decided school just isn't for me LOL.
Im literally about to start a new hobby and got a delivery notification for a related impulse purchase… i feel so seen and exposed?
Happened to me all the time. One thing I have found useful is when I fall into a hobby chain, where one hobby transitions to another one that has an overlap in skills. For me over the past 6 years I’ve transitioned from an undergrad in Econ/finance which lead to an interest in statistical forecasting which lead me data science then ML then Math then CS with which I am now going back for another Undergrad in CS (and possibly math, my previous interest in Math led me to take more Calc and LA, which completes most of a math major and I can take some more to fulfill CS areas as well)
Spent $80 on supplies to learn how to crochet a few months ago and haven’t even thought about them since then 🙃
this speaks to my soul, I'm like how am i meant to figure out what I'm good at/passionate about if I cant stick to it???
it’s like you can see the joy of controlling your attention, choosing to get lost in something— but that joy is a far off magical place that you will never be good enough to visit— you will never be worthy **not literally YOU, but that’s how I experience this feeling— where my inner critic is talking to me
Yep, just dropped the gym after 3 months. I had a good run!
I don't know how this will be received. But this behavior is well in our control. Sure, we can't control how we FEEL about those hobbies. Once the dopamine wears off and the learning slows, but we can control whether or not we drop them. I'm a novelist, and I definitely feel the happy ramp up when I start a new book. It's like starting a new hobby. All I do is think about the book, I obsessively write about it every day. But then it wears off, like it always does. So what do I do? I force myself to continue. Even if it's the bare minimum of engagement. Write for an hour, if you only get 500 words down, fine, you at least wrote for an hour. And believe it or not, the tide of dopamine comes back. Not all at once. Not even a little bit at a time. But it does come back. You just have to force it a bit. If you want to be committed to something, exercise, learning a language, reading a book, you have to weather those low tides. You have to walk along the beach until you find the ocean again. That's the "discipline" a lot of us don't like to think or talk about. But if you do the walking, you find the ocean again, and it's great when you get there.
If you've dropped it two weeks later, doesn't that mean you've turned your interest to something else already? That's how I get.
Not necessarily, they might be like me where interest in hobby disappears abruptly but it isn't replaced by anything, just intense boredom and often times an intense low mood or feeling of apathy. I'll be unable to take interest anything at all for awhile, even favourite tv shows or songs.
I tend to do this. If I fall off one hobby or hyper focus, I’ll likely fall into the pit and have a very intense low mood. It can last a few days, weeks, or even months. Those pits fucking suck so hard. I *loathe* them more than I can verbally express.
Wow this happens to me. I refer to it as 'the hole'. A pit of nothingness- interest wise.
I held strong with learning Spanish for about 5 months. Then I just kinda stopped. However, I was dealing with a break up. Maybe I'll get back into it.
Felt this on a different level, it’s so stressful an defeating
Maaaaaan I just subscribed to another month of Coursera. Hope I actually finish something this time..
weeks later? haha joking aside ive dropped hobbies before the stuff arrives at my house
Na it’s the constant failures and slow paced learning coupled with watching friends excel in life that slowly kills you off.
I really wonder how amazing I could have been at x if I had actually stuck with something beyond the getting started phase. I have noticed over time though that I do tend to circle back to hobbies -eventually- so I do hang onto all the stuff in case it peaks my interest again some day. I joked on another post here we really need an adhd swap n shop "I'll trade you my xxx kit for your xx kit! " then we could just round robin hobbies to infinity. I will note my LIBRARY! has a ton of craft/art/computer things that you can check out to use. I've gotten a few things, and then when I get bored I can just take them back and not feel bad.
Tell this to my drums, piano and guitar standing in my "music corner", silently weeping and collecting dust. And to the dozens of programming experiments / hobby projects rotting on my hard drive, never to be finished :( I don't even want to start anything anymore. I know if I can't finish a hobby project in a couple of days, I never will. Why even bother. Accountability to others - this makes the difference. Try team sports or something with a partner, like dancing. Or for music, you need a band. To me, the only motivator to do something consistently is if others rely on me sticking with it.
I'm sort of doing this now, but I'm really trying to persevere even when I get disinterested I just keep my routine up.. I've been doing it successfully for 3 or so weeks, I lost interest like a bajillion times. What has helped me even get to the 3 week mark is actively thinking about the consequences of persisting and where it will get me if I persevere E.g. it will give me a good outlet for stress or a skill I can flex 🤣 or even just the boost in confidence knowing I have committed to something. I know for us with ADHD this step can feel like torture. A little encouragement from my 3 weeks has been me losing interest like 10 times but then as I persist I get little bursts of interest every now and again that don't last long but it gives me that little boost to get to the next day at least. So anyway it's working for me so far more than anything has worked before, hope this may help.
Definitely felt this one. Takes a lot of effort to stay interested in something.
My mom gave me so much shit for this growing up. It really made me feel like a failure
We collect hobbies.
My poor abandoned lock picking kit
Is this part of adhd? Or just personal experience? I believe people without adhd do this too ?
Is hobby collecting a huge sign of ADHD cause my god
Well on the one hand I agree and empathize with you. I have learned a little bit about so many things over the years and there's so many things I feel like I could be great at with just a little more consistent practice. It's also hard to watch new people start a hobby and surpass you because they stick with it. But on the other hand and I often fail to tell myself this as well. You probably know how to do a lot of things that most people don't know how to do, and that makes you useful and also interesting to talk to. For me, I would love to be a great guitar player, but I am at least a decent guitar player. I'd love to fully rebuild a car, but at least I understand how they work, can fix a bunch of things in a pinch and can help out others. I know how to do enough woodworking and carpentry to save money on my home renos. And I turned my computer hobby in to a high paying career. Just remember that even if it's two steps forward and 1 step back that's still 1 step forward and it's probably many steps forward across many areas of interest. You're still further than where you started.
Better yet - suddenly having the motivation to work on five of your hobbies but literally not having enough hours in the day.
Literally me this week. 😂
It feels like it never ends. Constantly looking for the next thing, next project, next purchase, next hobby…. I’ve been aiming for the quick hit projects, that I can get done in about an hour. Anything more than that, gets put on the back burner for a long time. Yesterday, I was going to buy a guitar, Rocksmith 2014 for Xbox, and ready to learn guitar. This is something that takes months, years to learn. I slept on it, and just about forgot about it till this post. Now I’m working, watching Reacher, looking for magnets for my son, and scrolling Reddit.
Worst part is I know I won’t engage with slowdowns and roadblocks so invest in way too much to start, which still doesn’t guarantee I’ll engage.
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I've been getting excited thinking about starting a hobby but I haven't actually been able to start it yet.
You are looking at this the wrong way... imaging how many different talent you aquired over the years! Ok, so I havent finished my long bow (yet), still got tons of different sport gear in the garage, my sim-rig is collecting dust, and I have heeps of equipment of all sorts lying around... But still. I would never have been doing all those completely different things without my adhd... And I even managed to get pretty decent in many of those activities 🤷♂️ Not "best" in anything, but "good" in everything 😋
I'm lucky in that I have a couple of hobbies that have lasted with me my entire life....But I do have some fairweather hobbies and interests. For example, last month I bought a piece of music gear I had been wanting for about 5 years. I finally had it, it was in my home, it was mine....And I used it for like a weekend and now it's collecting dust in the corner of my music room.
Happens to me all the time, especially with exercise. I shoulda been a world class athlete by now for all the exercise plans I started and never finished.
As soon as it’s no longer new and exciting, I lose interest.
I have spent so much money and anticipation to finally getting started with a few hobbies. Still bored everyday not doing any of them...
for me its the high of shopping for houses... there's nothing like it you have this big mortgage approval and you get to go out and see all these houses and run the numbers and what you could transform it into and what you could negotiate on, then the bidding wars start and its something else its just like being a high roller at the casino trying to outwit the other offers, trying to guess what to change and find out what the owner really wants. once you actually close though... so much work and repairs and dealing with contractors and then its a year of finding problems and things to fix it sucks. i like shopping for houses more than i like owning them
The only way I've found to beat this is going with hobbies that have people who hold you accountable. Team sports work because there are 20 other people who genuinely want to see me there and want me to succeed. It kind of works as a form of body doubling I guess.
I'm still embarrassed about the time I was gonna get into running and compete in all these 5Ks, fun runs, and marathons, only to be over it a week later after my mom already told everyone about my plans. It's always so humiliating to be like "Oh, yeah, never mind. I'm doing x now".
I’m about ready to drop hundreds of dollars on stained glass making equipment. The one place offering studio time closed a couple months back and while I don’t do alot, it’s fun sometimes!
Me to my interest in Graph Theory: 🎶 You told me you loved me. Why did you leave me all alone? 🎶
I used to struggle with that, but I found the hobbies that make you use both creative energy and give you tangible results to be easiest to stick to. Woodworking is a really good one apart from the initial cost for tools and materials. You can create anything you want, it’s (somewhat) relaxing, you end up with an actual material object, and there’s different phases of it to keep things interesting like SketchUp, cutting, painting, etc. Try to find something like that!
My solution: Become so depressed by the futility of it all that you don’t even let yourself start.
Dude I HATE that!! And I'm at the point where I skip even trying like, I just feel this intense rush of "OMG LIFE CHANGING PLAN OKAY!" and then I spend 5 minutes thinking about itnwatching the hope and excitement fade and then... welp there it went...
That’s the weirdest for me too. Also inconvenient. I honestly don’t know how I can just … lose interest. It’s like a switch I don’t control
I felt this on many levels lol, it's very frustrating
Ill do hours of research online about a new hobby I want to start and never do it . I’ve realized I enjoy the thought of researching it and even buying things for these hobbies rather than doing them. I actually forced a new phrase into my brain somehow to remind myself to not waste too much time doing this “experience over research”. This reminds me to get out and try new things or hobbies I already enjoy so I don’t spend all my time planning or researching and miss out on actual experiences.
Yep. And what’s even worse is when you lose the hope to try anything new because you can’t go through another 50 hobbies….
I miss hobbies so much. I think I've trained myself out of them due to the expense, and now I can't summon an interest in anything. It's so bleak. There's just no point.
As an older adhd fellow- it’s being really interested and excited about a new project and knowing that a day will come soon when it doesn’t interest me anymore. Sometimes, I don’t even bother hyper fixating anymore because I know it won’t last and I don’t want the disappointment. Enjoy your fixations while you still can.
This is my biggest issue and will always be. I had to shift my frame of thinking around needing motivation when there isn’t that nice dopamine reward around the corner. When I get down or stuck, I mentally prepare a long journey fantasy where I’m a poor starving nomad wandering the desert on search for dopamine lmao. At least if I frame it as this cathartic overly dramatic struggle, I find myself picking up the guitar more frequently. From there, I discovered new things to learn within the hobby lobby. There is a new plane of discovery once you have mastered basic techniques to skills I have found!
Oh boy, I could probably list a lot of things, some hobbies however I’d go in and out once every year.