|
Maybe I was using "motivation" in a jargon sense. Motivation (some people call it "willpower", but that ascribes it a "choosability" it doesn't really have) is the resource you have that allows you to do things you don't want to do. To put it another way: some things in life are a hassle (or a "schlep", in pg's phrasing[1]). The more motivation you have, the less this matters. The less motivation you have, the more of a problem a thing being a "hassle" will be. When you have chronically-low motivation, you avoid "hassles" as a rule, to the point that you stop even being able to lead your mind down potential avenues of thought that involve "hassles." If you want a fictional example of what having ADHD really tends to look like, it's not Calvin of C&H, it's Shikamaru from Naruto[2]. This model, by the way, has all sorts of consequences outside of just ADHD. When people are "too hungry to decide what to eat"—that's because hunger depletes motivation, and decisions are fundamentally hassles. The hungrier you get, the less motivation you can tap to "just" decide. (You can force yourself to decide, or trick yourself into deciding, but you can't "just" decide.) --- [1] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html [2] Yui from K-On is also a striking example. That show's entire theme, actually, is essentially "how to succeed in life despite having ADHD", which is a real surprise for something so fluffy. |