Earlier today, I wrote a comment in response to a post on reddit about how to improve when you have ADHD. As someone who has ADHD and is pretty okay at a number of skills, I thought I would put that comment here too, since that's what a blog is for.
Enjoy!
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I have ADHD-PI, and here is a bunch of actionable advice I've used with myself for improving at skills. Since we all have ADHD here and are likely to type much more than we're willing to read, here's a tl;dr:
TL;DR BULLET POINT LIST
- Cultivate relaxed, sincere interest
- Don't over-read
- Don't over-train
- Don't keep playing when in a bad headspace
- Get exercise
I'm not amazing at the game, but I do have other competitive things I'm good at. Generally I try to cultivate a "relaxed, sincere interest" in things I want to get better at. If I try to force my brain to focus on the game, then I end up beating myself up about not doing things correctly. That teaches my brain that playing the game causes suffering, thus making it harder to focus. If I relax and let my brain think about the things I love about the game, that means my brain is more likely to stay engaged.
Honestly, having too much knowledge about the game that you're not ready to apply can be a hindrance to improvement. If you have too many things you're trying to do, you won't improve at any of them. Maybe try to focus on improving one thing at a time, and try reading about the game less. I've also often found that a lot of what people say online is either not applicable to my play-style, or I'm not ready to hear it yet. If I don't have the skill to pull off something that someone says online, the solution isn't to try harder. The solution is to ignore it until it seems more natural to me. I have often found that advice has made no sense to me, but after playing and improving for a few months, it will suddenly make sense and be the easiest thing in the world to execute.
(As an example - I used to not understand why people loved Ridley's nair so much. I would try to use it, but then it would get stuffed by disjoints. So I stopped trying to use it for a while. Eventually my spacing and match-up understanding improved enough that using nair seemed natural. So I, too, started to love the nair.)
The brain is an associative learning device - that is to say, if you are spending a lot of time playing sub-optimally, the brain will learn to continue playing sub-optimally. If you notice yourself on autopilot, go do something else so your brain doesn't train itself harder to play on autopilot.
Brains require actual physical chemicals in order to improve at skills, and they only produce those chemicals at a certain rate. If you try to improve at a skill when your brain doesn't have any more of the chemicals needed for learning, you won't be able to improve. So don't overdo it, and if you're already tired then don't play very much.
Exercise also improves the rate at which the brain produces these brain chemicals, so doing some sort of exercise can help. Half an hour of cardio per day has been shown to improve the ability of ADHD brains to focus. As well, strength training increases the rate at which the brain produces dopamine, which is one of the brain chemicals needed to learn. Especially if you're starting out, you don't have to do much - just a nice walk is good.
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Again, I hope that y'all had a good time reading this thing. I hope that at the very least the bullet-point list helps some of you.
Have a good day!
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