Do You Like Bicycles?
16. Do you like bicycles, even if you don’t ride them any more?
-from Edward Hallowell’s ADD Self-Assessment quiz, in Delivered From Distraction
I love bicycles. Ever since pretending to be Evel Knievel jumping Snake River Canyon, (riding a bike wholly unsuited for the job, with an ending that was, while less spectacular, just as final for the bike), I’ve had a passion for them. I’ve commuted all over Toronto by bicycle since I was a teenager, I’ve raced road and mountain bikes, I’ve done some bike camping. Weather permitting, I travel everywhere by bike, and now, I take my kids with me. In my garage, ten bicycles vie for maintenance and attention (4 are my wife’s - I married well - and two are my sons’, but still). That doesn’t include the well-used Burley trailer, the tandem Trail-A-Bike, two very small kids’ bikes, a couple of frames, and a unicycle I got for my 40th birthday. Lots of wheels and boxes of parts. Then there’s the tools. It’s all a bit much.
I realized that bikes and cycling were part of my ‘otherness’ when I first saw Breaking Away, the 1979 coming-of-age movie about a teenager who doesn’t fit into midwestern America. Dave longs to escape from the confines of his drab Indiana life. He wants to be an Italian bike racer. Breaking Away struck a chord with me not because it’s a great movie (it won an Oscar, and was nominated for several), but because I immediately understood the film’s use of the bike as a symbol of freedom, challenge, and escape. And though my life was hardly at all like that of the main character, I shared his experience of being unusual, not exactly a perfect fit with my surroundings. Like Dave, getting strong and fast on a bike was a way for me to embrace myself as a misfit (as far as North American sports of the 80s went). Cycling informed my identity. And on the road, with traffic to contend with and the world whizzing past my ears, my mind was calm and my thinking was clear. I remember the moment clearly: as I watched the scene where Dave drafts a truck at 50 m.p.h. to the strains of Mendolsohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony, a passion was born.
WTF?
Filed under: ADHD and Technology, ADT, Uncategorized
A friend who spends more time texting than I do told me that ‘wtf’ is a contraction of a crude, though often valuable question: “What the f___?” Who knew? Not me, that’s for sure. Until I was properly educated, ‘wtf’ for me stood for ‘Way Too Fast.’ When I thought of WTF, I had been thinking of the dizzying pace of modern life - the relentless, numbing assault of cell phones, BlackBerrys, email, junk mail, Twitter, you name it - and the widespread expectation that we can always find time for one more appointment, one more meeting, one more commitment. Surely with all this technology at our service, we can always find room for just one more thing on our calendars. Can’t we?
Of course we can’t. But we are constantly being told that we can. Almost every day some new gadget or software application holds forth the promise of enabling us to do more things, faster. We can maintain contact with more people, more often. We can be more connected. We can get more done. We can do things faster. Doing more things is good. Doing things faster is good. We will be happier.
But many people are saying that they are not happier at all. They are saying that they are overwhelmed. The truly wondrous technologies that make so many things possible are bombarding them with too many messages, too many demands for an immediate response. Swamped by input and no longer capable of sorting through it all, they seize up and shut down. A leading American psychiatrist, Dr. Edward Hallowell, calls this phenomenon Attention Deficit Trait (ADT). A leading expert in the study of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Hallowell believes that ADT is an affliction that mimics many of the symptoms of ADHD: distractability, inability to remain focused, restlessness, jumpiness. The key difference is this: while ADHD is largely an inherited, genetic neurological condition, ADT arises as a direct consequence of overwhelming pressure on people’s time — and technology plays an enormous role in generating and maintaining that pressure.
As a work-life coach who specializes in coaching adults with ADHD, I am convinced that ADT is a very real issue. In this blog I’ll be exploring issues surrounding adult ADHD and ADT, and I’ll share strategies, tools and ideas about how to become truly happier (and more productive, if that’s what you want), in this WTF world.
