My Battle With Crippling ADHD | Episode #67

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Transcript

0:01

hey folks Dr Mike here for the Mike Isel Channel making progress I'm still

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calling it that fck video number 67 today the story of

0:13

my battle with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder why am I talking

0:19

about this seems oddly self-infatuated a lot of people when they found out that

0:25

I had struggled with attention defs disorder have said they really want me to talk about my experience

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and so I'm making this video with like yep I'll do a good job and tell you all the stuff um this was not my idea to do

0:36

this but uh when enough people ask you about something you're like go apparently this is something that interests people um a few other times

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especially on this channel when people seem to like like some kind of subject more than another we make more videos on

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that subject they seem to do better and that means more people are learning stuff for being entertained so it's kind of our job so basically uh tldr is I had

0:56

crippling attentional deficit disorder uh just call it ADHD from now on as a

1:02

kid and as a young adult and it massively massively affected my life experience so I'll be recounting a bit

1:08

of that and hopefully you guys can take away some insights that can help you in your own struggles at some points during

1:15

this lecture and definitely in a summary towards the end I'm going to give you a lot of habits and practices that helped

1:21

me immensely to curate a higher attention span and get as much productivity as I could out of the

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attention span that I had and still do have so there's going to be not just me Naval gazing the entire time um but also

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tons and tons of practical tips for you guys so we're going to start I have how many points here I have sort of 14 13

1:44

bullet points of uh 13 bullet points of like kind of my CH chronology of my life

1:49

as it related to my attention span and my intellectual abilities so we'll start at the very beginning um when I was a

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young child like four five six years old uh apparently my parents told me on

2:03

several occasions that my um verbal abilities were quite high and that most

2:08

adults that spoke to me were like how old is this kid they're like he's six like holy crap he's pretty smart so I

2:14

got some of that um I don't remember a ton of it I remember a little bit of getting that but apparently that was a thing and then when um fast forward a

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little bit when we came to America when I was seven I had to take a mental test to get into school to get grade

2:27

assignment and apparently uh I did quite well on that mental test and they were like okay like he's definitely ready uh

2:33

to have uh schooling here in the United States at a grade level uh that his age indicates and so that was nice so

2:40

basically when I was a really little kid I had no reason to believe I had a deficit of any kind uh so imagine

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growing up until you're about six or seven years old and that entire time you're like everything's great so that's

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how I grew up and it's kind of important because it's sort of sets a baseline for your expectations and so next up is kind of

2:58

lowered sorry early signs of lowered ability um I remember I went to in

3:04

Russian there was like um there's preschool and then there's what you would call kindergarten in the United

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States is called noova in Russia it means like zeroth grade um and then

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there's first second and all the way up so in grade zero which I was like six years old for um you Russian school is different

3:23

there's not like fuzzy animals and big books to read you sit like in single

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file desks uh and pay attention and things are drawn on the board and you have a notebook to write in and all that other stuff it's like school school

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Eastern European school like hits at a th% right off the gate um and uh while

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for people who are inclined to be gifted this is exactly what they need uh people that are the opposite of gifted your boy

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uh struggle and so I remember paying roughly zero attention to what the hell was going on in school like if you ever pulled me out of school or pulled me out

3:52

of any activity when I wasn't in school but I had been going to school that year and you would like what do you learn at school I would have absolutely nothing

3:58

to tell you about the matter and so I don't actually remember learning anything in school um during

4:05

that year and I remember we had a notebook that had a picture of like lennin and Karl marks on the inside

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cover it's quite nice I did draw like uh various faces on them and I got in real deep [ __ ] for that and my notebook was

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just full of like random scribbles like other children at that age were writing into their notebook and I couldn't write

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I was just incapable of it and so um uh early on I got in you know the school

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teachers made my parents aware of the fact that I sucked and uh that's when my relationship to school being a not so

4:35

fun place began moved to America within a year I

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was completely fluent in the language um so that wasn't a big deal a little bit of a speed bump but the way it usually

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works especially with ashkanazi Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe is they uh have a few months where they're kind

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of look like they're dumber than everyone and then they have a few months where they're sort of like about as smart as everyone else and then after

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they just leave everybody behind because they're [ __ ] that's what they do best that did not work well for me I remember

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school being very confusing I remember uh watching other people in the class

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write these clean lines of bubble letters and responses to little notebook questions and being fascinated with how

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impressive it is that they could steady their hands enough and calm

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down enough and be patient enough to draw out all letters I was like baffled like someone could actually make

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something looks like a machine made it it was just insanely impressive to me in the from the perspective of like

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watching someone do something that you just can't fathom doing yourself like if you ever see a professional break dancer

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like jump up spin on their head do a backflip spin on their head again you're just like oh my God people can do that

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that's how I thought about all the other kids in my class who could actually like cogently do their schoolwork so it wasn't I was like oh I hate school or oh

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man I was like oh my God like uh why can't I do that this is insane and not not even why can't I do that I didn't

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even think I was able to do that and I was correct I wasn't I remember uh like I just couldn't do homework it was

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insanely difficult for me to sit down and actually do homework it was a very very painful process and I could just

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never keep up and I remember wishing I had a machine that could do my homework

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for me and if I had that funny enough Scott uh chat GPT actually can do that

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now so finally [ __ ] 30 years later or whatever um they were here um but um I

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remember wishing I had that machine because it would really solve all my problems like hoping because school for me was a very terrible time I knew I was

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supposed to be doing well at school I couldn't do well at school and it was all because of me and I Carri that around everywhere I went I did so poorly

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in school my first year in school that I got held back a grade and um I had to

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repeat a grade so I I got to know some people in uh I guess I started second grade

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um when I came to America and then I had to do second grade again and so I kind of know people from two different grades

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in like what is it hell Jewish Day School that I went to for Early Elementary when I was in America and I I

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still know some of these people and I know people from two grades because I was in two grades uh because I had to repeat the second grade that's how you

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know it's quite bad and um I did second grade I guess sort of twice and then I

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did um third grade once being held back a year um I remember I was kind of a

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little bit too young to realize how [ __ ] embarrassing that was but I was pretty embarrassed uh though to me it

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was kind of uh under the opes of like well you know English is a second language still so something like that so

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I think that helped my ego swallow it and I didn't have a ton of ego back then just not self-aware enough to have that sort of thing but the more I look back

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at it the more I was like oh [ __ ] that really did happen to me um and it stays with you something like that like a very

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early sign of inability doesn't exactly get your self-esteem for school going

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transferred to public school skipped fourth grade so I've never attended fourth grade ever I do not have an

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experience of being a fourth grader which is fun uh and I went straight to the fifth grade and I still sucked um

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and uh was doing very poorly in school I did have a Mr MC Phillips who's an amazing person he was an elementary

8:19

school teacher of mine and he actually ended up like with my parents permission of course inviting me to his home we

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like I helped him cook some food and he was talking to me like like a human would talk to another human he really

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saw something in me and I sure [ __ ] let him down because I had nothing special for anyone then including him I never

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did uh better in school uh in the time that I knew him so it was kind of one of these really sad things when someone

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it's like a very movie thing like a Hollywood thing like a teacher invests into a confused student and the student flourishes except I didn't flourish so I

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got to be real good at disappointing people at that point and one of the my starkest memories from that time in my

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life was um every now and again I didn't do this often I've did a few times I

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would uh like fake being sick because I was so scared to go to school because it was such a terrible place for me where I

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felt stupid and pointless and wrong and bad and like I wasn't doing what I was supposed to and uh nothing to do with

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like uh kids or other kids I had plenty of fun times with other kids at school I

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guess um it was the fact that I couldn't do the work and I was just bad like that

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the real reason you're there you're really bad at and so I would every now and again I would fake being sick my parents most of the time didn't buy it

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sometimes they did buy it so when I successfully got to stay home from school um I remember uh because usually

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in school like you're inside a classroom you don't see daylight much but I would see the the bright light of midm morning

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and early afternoon uh at home and we had lots of Windows and stuff and um The

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Association of that bright midday light during the week with the total embarrassment in my own heart of who I

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was and how much of a bastard I was for hiding from school and disappointing everyone including mostly myself that I

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still to this day it's now fading a little bit but all the way through my sort of like pretty legit success um as

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an adult I still uh don't like to see The midm Morning Sun during the week um

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like the way the light casts itself I like to be away from Windows and in basements midm morning it's actually mid

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morning right now and I'm in a basem with Scott the video guy Scott what what the hell are we doing in here man that

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does not sound good secret good god um I prefer it here um I don't I remember

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like in college kids would be like hey like can we have like it would be a nice day and be like can we do class outside and I'm

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like like not PTSD obviously very lowkey but like I just still to this day am not

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a big fan of the midm morning midafternoon Sun during the week during weekends I think it's great isn't that [ __ ] up like that's how much that that

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incident a series of incidents um really got to me was like cuz I would look at

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that son midm morning and uh be like oh my God I'm a coward I'm a failure I suck

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and I remember like even later watching movies like uh Ferris be's day off right

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Scott uh I've never watched that movie completely I watched a few minutes of it and I was like this is [ __ ] ridiculous he needs to be at school

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learning and I just never looked into it again [ __ ] skipping school I remember there was like a senior skip day that we

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all did and by then I was super successful at school as a high school senior and on my way to college and everything and doing the skip days

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almost everyone did it uh it was kind of like the school was like fine you guys just don't need to come in today I

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remember being like outside in the midm morning with other kids and I was like I hate it get me the [ __ ] out of here I should be back at school if I had to

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change anything about my childhood growing up I would just skip Senior Skip day and just be the only person at school uh yeah oh 100% yeah hell yeah

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yeah but by then I was a a jacked and a wrestler so nobody ever called me [ __ ] to my face and that was dope that's probably why I started wrestling and

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training so I could justify my nerdiness in any case I was always a nerd at heart and when you're a nerd at heart but you

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suck at school and academic things and even at being a nerd you leaves you with very little to grab on to in yourself as

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as a a thing of value and so okay Elementary School sucked Middle School uh I have the distinct honor of being

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the worst math student at the time in eth grade that's a distinct memory I mean I [ __ ] up all the other grades

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too um one really very emotional moment for me in my life was um um my dad used

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to when I didn't do well at school or various other things he used to like yell at me and stuff and every now and

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again like whoop my ass with a belt you know um it's just like how you did things in Russia and then in America and

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so I never really like uh I never really held it against him because I also thought I had it coming and I remember

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um I knew that uh like a report card had come in in middle school and I knew it was going to be terrible and I knew my

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dad was coming home soon and I ran into the backyard we had some trees in the backyard and I climbed as high as I could in a tree and just held down to

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the like branch and just wailed crying because I knew he was going to come beat my ass and I also knew I had it coming I

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just wanted to get away um and I still I'll never forget that memory because it was like you know maybe a low point you

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could call that and so it was a really really trippy time uh during Middle School I legitimately felt like I was

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good at nothing like there wasn't anything I was good at um and that's a really trippy feeling to have when

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you're sort of growing up and becoming an adult um I remember remember telling my parents like since I'm not good at

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school I'm going to try to help more around the house and of course they didn't like to hear that cuz again like this is kind of a thing cultural

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expectation a thing uh ashkanazi Eastern European Jews are supposed to be the

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best at school like the best um that's what you that's what you do um and uh

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they were like not interested in me hearing like I'm just going to like start helping around the house but they were like okay maybe that'll teach him

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some good habits that he can take to school but I also wasn't good at helping around the house I couldn't have a

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consistent work effort and focus anything long enough to do a good job at it I wasn't capable of the attention span that required to have attention to

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detail and Thor thoroughness like basically my trait conscientiousness was insanely low because conscientiousness

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one of the core elements required for it is like being attentive to things and I was not capable of that and so not only

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did I say I was going to help at home but I also couldn't do that so at that point my stock was quite low and for

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that extra little bit of confusion in my eighth grade year I won the school's geography B and I went to compete at

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States and I took like top 50 in the state of Michigan and geography as in eighth grader just because like at home

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I like looking at maps and like I read the encyclopedia for fun and by read I mean like pared because I did not have the attention span to work

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systematically through anything and so you know you typically don't win the geography be versus the whole school and

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all the smart kids unless you're like somewhat smart at something they s like I poured over maps at home for hours at a time like as a diligent effort like it

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was just cursory but like [ __ ] stuck when I learned it and so um that was extra confusing for myself and for my

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parents because look clearly he's not dumb um and if you talk to me and you

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spoke to me in real life you're like that pretty sharp but I was just like so terrible at school but the only recourse

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my parents knew at the time was like okay so we have someone who's clearly not stupid and like also like you know

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they have a lineage my mom was an English translator my dad was a uh uh a

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a PhD in physics and mathematical modeling and Atmospheric phys just like was just unlikely to make real like very

15:31

low intelligent people like if think you know like you grew up in an orphanage and no offense to anyone and you're like your parents were out and about or

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whatever maybe like very like low-grade service professions intelligence do not to be all end all but like if no one in

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your family had ever done [ __ ] in school like and you don't do well in school because some of the kids I hung out and talked to they were in that position

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they didn't take it as hard as I did because they were like you know like whatever it's like real uh real fun

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comment here that's all for the laws but like if you're black in you're bad at sports it hits if you're like Jewish in

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you're bad at sports you're like all right who cares it's like oh no I don't

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have a tennis career who gives a [ __ ] like you know you know you're not made for that anyway and so it was extra special uh to me to realize all that and

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for my parents they're okay he's clearly not stupid but he's not doing well in school he doesn't hardly do homework uh

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he's lazy and so like the the volume of the beatings just increased and the hilarious part was I thought they the

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beatings were quite Justified at the time I'm absolutely against uh putting your hands on your children as a matter

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of fact anyone in this case but yeah that was the thing so middle school for me was a um not Ultra Pleasant time uh

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tons of it like I always had fun in my own head uh for the most part I was always pretty cheery but uh it was tough

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times very tough times and then so transitioning to High School freshman year nth grade and I was failing

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everything I mean I was the worst student at everything in every class and I fantasized quite often about being

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anyone other than myself like I actually like there was other kids in the school that I knew pretty well and I like was

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like man they they live such great lives like they there was kids who would like um go on vacations with their family

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somewhere and um to me the big thing was like they were doing well in school and

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so when they went on vacations with their family not only did their family like them and approve of who they were but they could really unplug and have a

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really some time CU they knew like School wasn't a problem but like if I went on vacations with my parents I I

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had to realize like this is just some reprieve for me being total dog [ __ ] and

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my parents were very nice to me on vacation but I knew it was all kind of like as soon as we get back home I'm just going to be myself and I'm G to

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suck at the one thing I'm supposed to be good at and so I really wished like I was other people many other people I

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would have wished to just teleport in and just be them and you know like kind of typical for maybe for Te means to do

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if they're in a low self-esteem state but I was rock rock bottom started wrestling that was interesting I was not

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good at that right away either so there was no instant self-esteem boost but then during that um freshman year of

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high school my mom was getting her masters in social work and she started learning about various developmental

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disorders and got to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder you know they have the various checklists and the science and symptoms and she was like

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holy [ __ ] [ __ ] we got to get Mike to a child psychologist because man he's

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hitting nine out of 10 of these symptoms this is nuts and so like you know in Soviet Russia and ashkanazi Jewish

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culture in general you either do good at school or you're getting you're getting that [ __ ] there's not like developmental

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disorders are not a thing people entertain um so this was a big mental shift for my parents thank God huge

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kudos to them and that led to the big change and so early spring of freshman

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year in high school my child psychologist worked with me for a few sessions did lots of mental testing lots

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of conversation I found that I was just above mentally disabled in tasks that

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required attention span and just below gifted in tasks that did not verbal uh

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untimed IQ testing and apparently this is very very unusual because typically

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most of your mental tests will align roughly mine were completely Divergent and so the psychologist uh then

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implemented direct tests of attention span it was one of these where you stare at a screen and when you see something

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pop up you hit the space bar and so like if you're like [ __ ] off into space you just miss a lot or you have a huge

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latency time until you hit the space bar and so I blew that test out of the water which is to say did terribly on it and

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then um I was diagnosed because of all the battery of tests and conversation with

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uh attention deficit hyperactivity disorder inattentive type not hyperactive type because I was not Hy

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active like when I was a kid at school I wasn't like bouncing out of my chair and throwing things at other kids and

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yelling being the class clown I sat there like everyone else but like my brain was just not focused on the

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material I would stay outside I would stare at various things on the ground I would do a lot of like just being in my

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own head where like I was looking at the board but I was thinking about everything else other than what the hell was on the board that kind of stuff I

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wasn't hyper so inattentive type diagnosis and they were like well look like the medications we have them for

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children uh at the time it was only riddlin and Aderall and they were like you they work these medications

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definitely work um and your son should be on them and my dad asked like could we give him a placebo because he didn't

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want me it's a very old school Russian thing where like chemicals and drugs are bad sort of understandably and he was

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like can we just give him a placebo because he'll believe in himself and he'll do it and remember my child psychologist apparently was like that

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does not work like your son actually has a technically a mental disorder and his

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stuff in his brain actually doesn't work like it's supposed to the drugs will help with that you can't just willpower

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your way through it and of course my dad didn't want to hear that though he took it on the chin um and uh you know like

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for my dad as a human like I've never seen anyone be so proud of someone

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facial expression wise as my dad when he looks has looked at me doing various things that made him proud and to him

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it's like a distinct piece of himself lives inside of me and when he was told like your son's brain is broken like

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that that was really hard for him to hear and he was like can't we just Placebo our way out of this and it was like nope so sometime I believe in March

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of 1999 uh end of my freshman year second

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half of my freshman year of high school I was prescribed five milligrams of

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Aderall uh to take in the morning and then another 5 milligrams at night and then a dose eventually titrated up to I

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think I was doing like 20 and 15 towards the end of my Aderall days very slow titration and I took that and went to

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school like usual in the morning and I get to school and my first class

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every day was math class which I was getting like a 16% or something like by

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chance if I had guessed at the answers I would have done better type type of [ __ ] it would was not multiple choice so I had was getting the lowest score in the

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class by a long shot and I remember that we were being asked questions about what was going on on the board I think we

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were like um doing some basic equations maybe like dividing fractions or something like that and uh I usually the

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board like total [ __ ] nonsense like math was way way way way too hard like imagine looking at a series of like um

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equations from quantum mechanics which you don't understand either the symbols or the manipulations that's how it felt

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for me to look at regular equations that were tailored for I was in the opposite

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of gifted class for math because we had a track system at school I was in the lowest track for

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math that to me looked like [ __ ] quantum mechanics typically and so I was on adderal for the first day ever and I

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was looking at the board and the teacher was asking questions like how do you solve this equation I was like why isn't no one raising their

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hands there's an obvious solution so I raised my hand and I was like it's five or whatever and the teacher Mr yaang he

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was like that's correct and I was like he has asking more questions I

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instantly know the answer okay that's the answer he's a correct I just did this the entire rest

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of the class like I swear to God I must have been one of the only people Ever Raised their hands and I did it like 50 times

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one [ __ ] dose of Aderall later I was able to see mathematics for the first

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time in my life I walked right up to him at the end of class next class was

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Spanish class and I said hey I'm going to be your best student and like this is a guy who's had me as a student for

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months and he was like okay like what the heuck do you say to that yeah like I had a stellar day but like you like your

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track record sucks you don't just say that and and walked out went to my next

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class similar things happened the rest of the day

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and that day especially that first hour in math class that morning was still to

24:12

this day I've had some cool experiences in life probably one of the most seminal moments of my life in general

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um basically it set a new standard it was there that I realized that my my um

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normal Baseline of operating without Aderall um was like uh what normal

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people could relate to is like being six beers drunk like try to do math equations when you're six beers in

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you're like what the [ __ ] is going on here and then you're like not even thinking about the equation you're like oh oh we're still doing this that was my

24:49

Baseline and on Aderall I had felt like I was awake and sober for the first time

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in my entire life for the several hours on end that Aderall allowed me to have

25:03

these superpowers I can't say enough I won't say much more just to keep this nice and

25:08

concise I can't say enough about how big of a deal that was and that I was able

25:14

to do this and so I used to fantasize that I could be other children that were

25:19

at least decent at school and now I was like this is how they feel all the

25:25

time what the hell it just it is the biggest change maybe

25:31

I've ever experienced in my life from one day to the next was that boom now

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you're awake because of this medication I began to do well in school and better and better and better and more

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importantly still I began to understand Concepts because For the First Time if

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you have a short enough attention span some concepts are so difficult that

25:55

you have to parse them they're getting this part Now with uh gpts that you may

26:01

be using like uh claw 35 and chat GPT where the machine is only allowed to

26:08

think through something once so whatever answer it renders that's the only one you get now they've got reasoning models

26:14

like GPT 01 or 01 or whatever it's called where it doesn't just think through something

26:20

once it goes through a chain of reasoning it goes okay I have this think about this think about the answer how

26:25

did the answer go check back to the problem go again change chain chain chain chain and then at the end of that it's like well it really gets to some

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insightful [ __ ] that's the same thing you do in your brain but if you have a short enough attention span and mine was

26:36

preposterously short I never got anywhere past one or two links in the chain maybe past zero and so if it was

26:43

an equation I had to solve which had six logical chains of reasoning I just got so little into it that I couldn't do it

26:49

and all of a sudden Aderall opened up my context window to like you know four or five at a time and then kind of

26:55

reorganize and going again all of a sudden I was able to understand Concepts that had such a depth I just didn't even

27:01

know they had that depth because I wasn't awake for long enough at any one time in my own brain to encapsulate all

27:07

of the interconnections and the linkages and now I was able to do that I went to

27:13

summer school that freshman year because I was I failed most of my classes I had to make all that up and I was like very

27:20

out of place in summer school because there some kids there that similar circumstance but most of the kids there like they just weren't for school didn't

27:27

give a [ __ ] and was the most important thing some of them were quite talented you didn't care right so they didn't care that they fail regular school they

27:32

didn't care they failed summer school they were just there like Scott you know what I'm saying kids like went through school that were just like when do I get the [ __ ] out of here so I can start

27:38

living my life yeah yeah a lot of kids that was summer school almost everyone and I was at the front of every class

27:44

taking detailed beautifully polished notes working through problems in the book answering all the questions and I

27:50

began to learn about Basics uh and think about them like geometry algebra biology

27:57

I remember learning about the structure of an animal cell and realizing in the summer of 9th grade to 10th grade that

28:04

complex life was just a machine and I just was so blown the [ __ ] away by that

28:11

because I had never thought about something that in depth ever in my entire life and I thought very deeply

28:17

about the basics of what is an equation what makes an equation Works geometric

28:23

proofs what is the structure of the universe that generates geometry why wild [ __ ] that I was just like it was

28:30

all one gigantic Revelation for months and months and months on end and I would come home after school typically and do

28:38

homework for hours on end it it was my favorite time one of the best times of

28:43

my life be definitely the best time of my life up until that point because I was able to have success in something

28:52

that I thought was impossible to have success in the sheer pleasure of being

28:57

able to or organized complex systems and generate understanding inde dependably demonstrate that understanding through

29:03

successes and problem sets was nothing short of euphoric in the deepest way

29:09

possible and every time I did that I learned more and more about everything that was around me and what was inside

29:15

me it was an an an Awakening that lasted for years I could been asleep at the wheel and I was finally started to wake

29:23

up just the most beautiful thing I couldn't have ever imagined I couldn't

29:28

imagine that I was the person doing this I remember like talking to people when I was in 10th Grade that I hadn't talked

29:34

to since 9th grade and I was I I made it was kind of awkward for them I'm sure because I was like I'm different now

29:39

like I made sure to like I'm not the same person you knew and they're like okay and then they like interacted with me my mentality was different on Aderall

29:46

I was much more focused much more precise much less fun I'm sure but like I was getting really really good at

29:51

school and so they probably noticed like it was kind of different but no one really pays that much attention to you

29:56

but I needed to have people know and needed to have myself know that there was this Chasm that I was this terrible

30:02

person before and I wanted to forget that person entirely because I was this unbelievably cool new person I was not

30:08

cool let me rephrase that I was an effective person now I was a precise person I was competent I was capable and

30:14

I had so valued these things internally for a long time that now that I was

30:19

um the person that could exhibit them I lived in an idilic fantasy world to be

30:27

completely honest it was wild um I had basically never had

30:32

access to uninterrupted sequential thoughts before I was in paradise and by my senior year of high school I was uh

30:39

objectively the best math student at school I had scored the highest on the Michigan Math Prize test by Longshot of anyone I was one of four students to

30:46

qualify for part two which was the advanced part and I was the highest scorer by a long shot in part two um and

30:52

uh I was the best social study student at school I was one of the top science students in the school and there's lots of [ __ ] lots of ashkanazi Jews well

31:00

off [ __ ] and lots of Russian immigrants too like you know felt pretty good about being top tier there I had

31:06

like a huge score on the ACT in my last two years of school I got a 4.0 just

31:12

complete night and day transformation like I went literally from being one of the worst students in school if not the

31:18

worst to being one of the best if not categorically the best student in my several years front to back of anyone

31:25

behind or in front of me grade wise and that does something to you it was

31:32

confusing but in a very very good way um but towards the middle of my senior year

31:40

I realized that the medication was losing its power and the side effects were starting

31:46

to grow um and so I began to be a bit

31:51

concerned I got into the University of Michigan which was very prestigious patted myself on the back plenty for

31:56

that one and I started my freshman year but I actually went to orientation for freshman year like during that summer

32:02

between uh um high school and college that summer was a real idilic summer

32:08

every summer by the way I would come off of the meds to recycle uh the Adaptive effects even back then I was doing

32:13

periodization surprise and um it worked but I went to the orientation with Nom

32:20

meds to college orientation with Nom meds and I realized I was still nothing

32:25

without the medication like I was super confused who knows what classes I signed up for I ended up signing up for the

32:31

wrong classes cuz the um the people that were supposed to tell you what classes to sign up for they they signed me up

32:36

for some wrong classes I shouldn't have been in but I just didn't have the wherewithal to correct them because I didn't have that precision and that

32:42

attention span to do it and I just remember leaving that orientation um and

32:48

um being like oh [ __ ] uh sure hope the medicine works this time around cuz I

32:54

cannot do school without it um it would be great to discover I could but but I couldn't and when I took the meds coming

33:01

back to school increasingly I just had more side effects of being essentially

33:07

OCD um and Mild psychosis and uh the attention span improvements were getting

33:13

lower and lower and so I was no longer getting a lot of attention span benefit from Aderall but I was getting a lot of

33:19

uh the nasty side it's like seeing someone on meth in their first two hours of meth they're like Superman in their

33:25

last two hours after 72 hours of being awake they're [ __ ] crazy and useless

33:31

and so over the long term my brain responded to Aderall by being like this ain't it freshman year of college I

33:37

failed multiple classes and I did summer school and failed that too and I have a distinct memory of being in the

33:44

apartment I shared with a roommate and I was in my room and I realized that I was

33:49

failing these classes it was too late to save it also I couldn't save it because I didn't have my abilities anymore and I

33:56

was on the ground like literally rolling around writhing in agony I I it was a nightmare

34:04

everything around me that I had built my new me was unfolding back into the dog

34:09

[ __ ] from which I came and getting a glimpse of paradise and competency and ability and then having that all go away

34:17

um is a special extra kind of hurt and it was my nightmare to fail in school

34:23

again and I was living my actual nightmare right when it mattered most in

34:29

college bad deal sophomore and junior year of school uh in I believe the middle of my

34:37

sophomore year the uh medicine the Aderall to to by the way I none of this

34:43

is disparaging Aderall um at this point I was on Aderall XR extended release which is a dope medicine um saved my

34:51

life not in the literal sense but gave me my life it showed me that I could be

34:57

some one that I wanted to be and so I'm not taking anything away from Aderall but at this point it was just a really

35:02

bad match up for me it was causing so much OCD and anxiety that I stopped taking it all together and since it

35:09

really just wasn't helping my schooling anymore like had a little bit better attention span but the OCD and anxiety

35:15

kashed that so it's kind of like a net neutral maybe it just except it felt really bad and so I stopped taking

35:21

medicine I failed uh so many classes my sophomore and junior year that I had to reapply I got kicked out of school and I

35:28

got I had to reapply to go back to school and I you know the whole [ __ ] where you write the essay about why and I was like my brain broke and now maybe

35:35

it'll work again and they're like [ __ ] so they let me back into school um and I remember uh some stuff started changing

35:42

there I think junior year I went to school during that summer for actually

35:47

my child psychologist uh I had a job open up and it was in a database uh design entry and management so you could

35:54

design a database enter some stuff into it manage the database I was entering like uh test scores on various mental

36:00

tests to do meta correlations and stuff and there I discovered with my child psychologist help that if I broke up the

36:07

tasks into small chunks I could actually be meaningfully productive and this wasn't like rocket science it wasn't as

36:13

much deep thinking which I was still not super capable of doing but uh it was

36:18

more like a a bit more rot work and uh that I could actually do because it was like if I forgot what I was doing I

36:24

would just look up be like oh line and oh I'm entering and I do this and there I also started listening to music really

36:30

for the first time in my life uh there were two reasons I didn't listen to music much one the music of the 90s just

36:35

fell flat on me altogether I [ __ ] hated grunge so much that I was like this sucks and then also um I didn't

36:41

really like to listen to music because I had such low self-esteem that when music

36:48

is supposed to be something that's uplifting and I couldn't um stomach the experience of being uplifted because it

36:54

was such a facade it was so fake and then so literally like well into my um

36:59

you know there's like you know various R&B and romantic songs were cool but nothing really truly hit me spiritually

37:05

with music until I started that job and started listening to Yahoo powered launchcast internet radio which is

37:11

[ __ ] amazing I can't believe it's gone so I guess it just didn't monetize or something um maybe a little bit ahead

37:18

ahead of its time but I was exposed to electronic music for the first time especially downtempo and chill out and

37:23

it was a big deal because it got me into that groove of very calm calm very cool mindset and from that

37:31

calm the music helped me to access that little tiny little grain of calm that little grain of uh stability I could

37:38

generate a meaningful attention span and that calm Focus that the music queued me into I was able to work and that was the

37:45

first time off of medicine that I could do productive very low-scale meaningful work and that was a big deal and I

37:53

started listening to electronic like [ __ ] crazy and then I did two senior years because I had failed so many

38:00

classes and transferred Majors that I needed a fifth year to finish up but I came back to school my senior year and I

38:07

actually didn't live on campus which is probably for the best because lots of distractions on campus I commuted daily

38:13

from Oak Park Michigan to an Arbor Michigan where school was with my sister because she had a job in an arbor and she was living at home with parents for

38:19

a little while and so I got to live at home and I got the opportunity to do

38:24

homework for school in the same office uh my parents office we had like one

38:29

room for an office for all of us to share that uh I did my high school homework in and my high school homework

38:35

I mean Godlike moments I remember getting to that office for the first time and sort of starting to take out my

38:41

school stuff for my senior year of college and and being like this is a

38:46

sacred area and am I really about to desecrate this with terrible memories of

38:52

inefficacy because this this office only had the greatest memories of discovering

38:58

I was capable of focusing intellect and now here I am no medicine and the first few days were a little rough but then I

39:04

was like oh [ __ ] like okay this doesn't have to be tragic I I can do some work I

39:11

I'm okay I wasn't great but I was okay I switched degrees to Kinesiology a little

39:16

bit more self-esteem at that point I was a competent lifter in my own right and I was actually able to do some decent

39:22

homework there and I was like holy [ __ ] like all right all right like sh is

39:27

actually happening what a trip nothing crazy that year got BS and c's next year my final senior year I was

39:35

able to get some BS and C's and even a few as's I was able to focus a bit more my study habits were much more

39:40

fine-tuned and I did a lot of work uh especially when I came back to school my last year to live on campus or slightly

39:47

off campus I remember going to The Graduate Library a lot in the stacks they had these little offices that were

39:53

sometimes windowless and sometimes just a window that you would really have to Creek over to see what the [ __ ] was going on out side and it was this teeny

39:58

little office with just a desk and nothing else in it and in the grad Library like making noise got you kicked out so nobody made any noise it was

40:04

sheer [ __ ] silence and uh Scott I remember this's this one guy on central campus Because

40:10

the library was right next to this like diag area who was like playing his saxophone in the middle of the diag and

40:15

I had fantasies of going down there and just breaking the [ __ ] right in front of him like oh your [ __ ] mind some of us

40:20

is a school it's a school you're not on a recital nobody gives a [ __ ] nobody's paying you for this in any case um it

40:26

was a really good good time for me to focus and I got a lot of awesome work done in the stacks in the grad library

40:32

and I was like okay man maybe we got something I took the graduate record exam J I did decently well um and I got

40:38

under grad school so [ __ ] got to popping I then got into master's program went to

40:46

the master's program I was able to get B's and A's without overwhelming effort so my brain was starting to kind of

40:52

Click along and I by that I knew pretty well what I needed as far as a setup to get my best work done um I had to

40:59

isolate myself I never studied in groups it's a total [ __ ] waste of time for me I chunked out time like 15 to 45

41:05

minute Sprints with some breaks um and very defined set of tasks on a task list in that very hyper organized way I could

41:13

supplant my lowered attention span to combine with really good study habits to do decently well and at this point

41:19

because my attention span was starting to elevate but I was always very inally curious I could finally read books just

41:24

for the sheer pleasure of learning I began to read books uh articles on the internet uh psychology economics history sociology

41:31

Evolution Etc and that reading books that are at least a little bit more fun for you but sometimes get a little tough

41:37

you have to push through I think really had a chance to train my attention span a bit more did a year of no school went to New

41:44

York trained some people Nothing attention span requiring there came back to school for a PhD and that first year

41:50

of PhD program is when I really broke out I learned at a really rapid Pace I was capable of learning at a rapid Pace

41:56

I spent tons of of time in the lab quiet hours by myself plugged into headphones on the computer studying and learning

42:02

and reading and formulating ideas and co-founded RP at that point with Mr Nick

42:08

Shaw began creating novel lectures began H hypothesizing novel ideas that's the first um time at which the idea of a

42:15

maximum recoverable volume for which I'm known began to coales in my head because I had finally worked in depth long

42:21

enough to make some sense out of some [ __ ] um and all the while I was reading a lot of extra ular material on various

42:28

intellectual topics and I actually began finally to feel as smart again as the

42:35

early glimpses of my you know 10th uh 11th and 12th grade years in school when

42:40

I was on Aderall but I wasn't on any medications whatsoever and um even though I had to

42:46

have pretty special circumstances to be my most productive and worked in an isolated manner I knew that I was on my

42:52

own terms uh able to get the work done and wow I could not believe it was

42:57

happening like I was I think um 26 years old by that point and for the first time

43:04

ever I was like oh oh like a competent human being for the first time non-drug

43:11

assisted in my entire life and then adulthood really quick tldr here because not much uh to say but finished my PhD I

43:18

began writing books I began creating uh the architecture for apps tons of lectures and teaching my intellectual

43:25

productive bandwidth really exploded then in my adult life uh as a young adult I took a few Advanced IQ tests

43:31

blew those out of the water and listen like does it sound like I'm bragging yeah I'm [ __ ] bragging but when you came from not [ __ ] and you thought you

43:37

were [ __ ] [ __ ] uh and now you're like testing like at the highest possible levels of IQs no longer pick up

43:43

the variation like it hits you different and so like yeah if you were always smart and you're like I'm super smart

43:49

people can't no [ __ ] but I wasn't always smart and so for me getting that validation from formal testing was like a super super [ __ ] big deal because

43:56

it was like is this all an illusion take a few IQ tests and you're like it's it's not an illusion you look back and you

44:01

have multiple Advanced degrees in book authorships and you're like holy [ __ ] [ __ ] holy [ __ ] my brain works when you

44:07

grow up knowing and expecting your brain to be total dog [ __ ] it hits a little different and by this point as an adult

44:15

I finally had a very fine-tuned set of practices to maximize my productivity which I'm going to share with you in

44:20

just a little bit and maximize my focus because I had earned those the hard way

44:25

by trial and error a lot of people I knew that were always gifted and had a really good attention span they never even got good study habits they never

44:31

needed them they would like I would see people doing math homework like in the 5 minutes before class started turn it in and get an A and I was like oh my God

44:37

how can you focus on anything sitting in a [ __ ] hallway it was baffled the [ __ ] out of me so I had to develop these

44:43

tasks and now I had my Arsenal and even though at this point my attention span

44:48

like today I can do work in a noisy coffee shop I sure [ __ ] stuck to my

44:54

windowless office scheme and I still do because it worked incredible wonders for me as a matter of fact this pseudo

45:00

script that I'm reading off of to remind me of the general ideas as I talked to you guys was written in my basement

45:05

windowless office and my computer setup the by far my most favorite place in the

45:10

entire world if you see me on a beach in Mexico or some sh drinking a margarita where would I want to be other than that windowless basement office and I'm not

45:17

joking literally my favorite place in the world because there I have access to this deep Stillness that my brain was

45:25

not capable of for forever and which never ever take for granted and deep Stillness combined with an ability to be

45:32

productive and focused is just man 69 for scissoring Scott it's a lesbian

45:38

thing uh huge huge deal so I I no longer have an exceptional attention deficit I

45:44

probably on an attention test would test slightly below average but not far enough to matter and boy did I wa take

45:51

away some lessons from the experience let me hit you guys with some lessons uh hopefully these make some sense and some

45:56

really good tips for you to improve your own ability to sustain attention at meaningful tasks so number one um you

46:04

can conquer something like I did school so much that recently I was a professor for free uh and then I just wasn't a

46:11

professor anymore because you got way too busy running a tech company um that level of success millions and all that

46:17

[ __ ] but you can still have high school nightmares reliably most Sunday

46:23

nights Monday mornings I'll have a nightmare about showing up to school with none of my tasks done um so that's

46:30

kind of a trip You' think my brain would realize now that I'm all like s successful or whatever but hasn't sunk

46:35

in yet 100% so now I wake up from those dreams feeling like total [ __ ] and I have to remind myself like oh oh I won I

46:41

won I I won school I defeated school um so that's kind of a trip so if you're still dealing with some [ __ ] from

46:47

your past just be really kind and to yourself and patient with it because some [ __ ] the brain just doesn't like to

46:53

forget over time so it's nothing I would have ever thought would happen but it is thing another thing I learned from my

46:59

experience with this this is a really big Insight I think people don't become who they're supposed to be until

47:06

oftentimes well into adulthood so I would be really careful harshly judging and definitively judging either the

47:12

lowest or highest Achievers when they're younger too assuredly like when I have really amazing undergraduate students

47:19

I'm like oh they're probably on to some really good stuff but maybe not and might have some undergrad students that

47:24

suck I'm not like oh this guy's a piece of [ __ ] he's awful I'm like maybe he's just still growing up because if someone

47:29

had judged me in undergrad they'd be like this is a person who's never going to see success and now I'm like famous

47:35

on the Internet or whatever the [ __ ] so [ __ ] hits different people change and uh

47:40

judging especially younger people too harshly obviously like discipline is a good thing and just judging in the sense

47:46

of like predicting for sure they're going to succeed or for sure they're going to fail not a thing next if you want to improve your

47:56

ability to to focus I would highly recommend you try some of the following things first realizing that it will take

48:02

months and years to improve your focus a lot it's not a thing you can do in a week and see huge results it's a dedicated practice next meet yourself

48:10

where you're at do only as much work on end as you can to be a little uncomfortable at the end and then take a

48:16

break for as long as you need and then repeat that process it's a going to the gym and expecting to be able to lift 500

48:21

lbs for the first session like nope you can only lift 100 do a a good job at 100 get close to failure take a break repeat

48:27

and then next week go up to 105 it's exactly the same thing slowly see if you can't push

48:33

yourself just a bit towards the end of work sprits and go a little bit further each time you don't have to keep super

48:38

detailed track but if you get to a point where you're doing your work and the last five minutes you're like okay I

48:44

really need to focus that's the the brain training that probably kicks in a lot of the adaptations so make yourself

48:50

a little bit uncomfortable on some occasions pushing yourself a little bit further into those work sessions then back off and rest and over time this

48:57

practice might help improve your attention span for me I think it did really really awesome awesome things

49:02

another thing is this be gentle with yourself if your attention wanes relax take a few breaths maybe pop out for a

49:09

quick walk refocus hit it again if you're really pooped try again in a few minutes try again in a few hours try again in a few days don't get pissed at

49:16

yourself for not paying attention that helps nobody so feel like damn it think damn it like that's cool Hollywood [ __ ]

49:21

to convey to the viewer of the movie that the person is frustrated there's no use in your actual life don't ever get

49:27

hard on yourself you're having trouble paying attention take a bre deep breath take a break be easy warmly and gently

49:34

allow yourself to come back into your practice of attention on the task don't judge yourself a ton there's nobody watching I promise

49:41

um meet yourself where you're at on the environmental side when I would get a

49:46

chance in high school to do homework for that uh like difficult class we were in in class I would just do other stuff

49:53

like other homework from other easier classes and when the teachers would be like why you doing the work that you're supposed to be I'd be like I just straight up can't pay attention enough

49:59

with all the [ __ ] going on around trust me I'm going to get my work done at home and I did every single time and I was

50:05

the best and so like at some point teachers stop asking me because I just knew I did not have the attention span to do work where I was supposed to

50:11

knowing this um you know like if people are like hey do you want to like do a group study thing you can do group studying and here's how I like to do

50:17

group studying in college you do all your studying by yourself you [ __ ] Master the [ __ ] by yourself you show up to the group you teaching everyone else

50:24

and hitting on all the hoes and [ __ ] that's really group studying as far as getting laid if you haven't heard that before it's definitively true Scott you

50:30

ever get anything out of study groups other than like a few numbers why the [ __ ] people do it a waste of time always

50:35

a waste of time except for like showing off that you're the [ __ ] man you know [ __ ] already and getting that sweetness so if you know you're not good for group

50:41

studying just do it all ahead of time you've solved that problem for yourself don't think oh but we have to study in a group so I have to be competent even

50:48

though I know I don't have the intention spam for this [ __ ] all that nonsense you can skip this straight to point C couple of other environment tips these

50:55

are big small small room so there's not a ton going on not a ton of distractions for you uh ideally no windows or closed

51:01

blinds if you deal with sunlight you like that [ __ ] great but they're better not be [ __ ] out there you're looking at

51:06

uh comfy seat and comfy desk a nice set of mechanical pencils or whatever nowadays people don't even use that [ __ ]

51:13

um uh that's comfortable notebooks that are very clean and organized don't work with Messy stuff stay as organized as

51:19

you can pre-drawn lines and graphing paper works really really well um minimal sound distractions I didn't have

51:26

when I was growing up but now you can get really nice headphones and uh go to YouTube and type in green noise or blue

51:32

noise any of the color noises have the static that like you can't hear anything else and the static has no meaningless

51:38

uh anything for you to pay attention to so really quiets your mind and lets you focus on whatever you're doing that stuff is a huge huge deal have a

51:45

distinct to-do list for the session do not try to Overkill and get everything done do amounts of work that are a

51:50

little bit challenging but comfortable so you get to build up that work endurance and slowly increase it over

51:56

time definitely take breaks when needed be gentle if you think you need a break you need a [ __ ] break don't push yourself too hard double check your work

52:03

after it's done to make sure everything's clean and neat you didn't forget anything people with attention span stuff sometimes forget stuff I

52:09

would say five days or something like that of regular work don't do tons of weekend stuff let your brain rest uh

52:15

don't do cramming BS no all nighters that stuff also [ __ ] [ __ ] nonsense all nighters are again only exclusively to get you laid they have nothing to do

52:21

with school work uh all the people that did all nighters I beat them all at school [ __ ] all those people JK you guys are great all nighters are just like

52:27

[ __ ] stupid nonsense that gifted people do to like do well on a test and forget everything after don't even bother with that [ __ ] cuz you might not

52:33

have high attention span all nighters are just delirium for you which is really fun so again do all of your work first show up to the all nighter and be

52:39

like yeah I'm here to do it and just get drunk I'm kidding but maybe that's fun um when you start with work maybe a

52:45

warm-up of something easy at first but generally I like to start with the toughest work first and then uh and and

52:52

some combination of the toughest work slash the work you like the least so if you really love history class but you really hate biology start with Biology

52:59

crush it out finish it and then move on to history other way around You' be mentally fatigued by the time you get to biology and you'll be like oh my God how

53:05

the [ __ ] am I ever supposed to do this do your toughest stuff when you're fresh and for when you have a decent enough

53:12

attention span because it doesn't work super well if you're starting out with [ __ ] zero meditation is an amazing tool you can use I use it all the time

53:18

right now almost daily uh so it's awesome two more things if you want to

53:24

figure out deep things about the world and yourself you have to read a ton about them do a lot of work that relates

53:31

to them and think deeply about them as often as you're driven to do so I've spent so many years at in windowless

53:39

rooms at desks thinking about very specific Concepts like how could I not begin to learn something meaningful

53:45

you're not going to get a lot of traction on things just cursorily thinking about them every now and again deep focused attention deep work which

53:51

I'm [ __ ] obsessed with is the way to make all the big changes in your intellectual scheme if you think about

53:57

something long enough dots will start to connect for you so you don't have to be there like I to figure this out just IM

54:03

imbue yourself into the work and then eventually you'll wake up on morning be like oh my [ __ ] God I just figured out that [ __ ] problem it's all going

54:09

to connect for you there's zero roughness required you just have to calmly attend to the task at hand and

54:15

watch the intellectual Beauty unfold no grunting or squinting but the work is required it's going to take hours of

54:20

work it's said hard work I hate the term hard work sometimes because there's nothing hard about it you just do the work sometimes it feels hard then you

54:27

take a break lastly you were on your own journey and your own pace you can

54:32

compare yourself to others or wish you had their abilities but those are pointless pointless tactics I've done them all none of them work take it slow

54:39

take it one step at a time do your best rest recover repeat and you're going to

54:44

be likely to surprise yourself and Achieve great things anyway uh that was

54:50

fun I'm already late to an appointment with my wife for some Bank [ __ ] so if I lose all my money you know why guys been

54:56

real shoot some questions in the comments and maybe I'll get to them at some point and maybe if you have other suggestions for my topics see you in the

55:02

comments section peace homies

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