A Question Worth Asking

One of the best ways I've found to ask meaningful questions is to ask questions that challenge my status quo. many of us with ADHD are great at pattern recognition as things happen again and again, we start to figure out what to expect in all these different situations. This is great, but too often, we don't do anything with this information. We know we're going to lose our keys when we get in the house, but we just keep on losing our keys because that's what we do. We don't question this process. We don't take the necessary steps to make change happen. and so this is where I'm talking about questioning our own status.

What are the things we are doing in life, where we know we're going to have a sub optimal outcome. And I'm sure a lot of you do this already. It's probably how you found this podcast asking, Hey, is there something I can do to help with my ADHD?

Part of what keeps us from doing anything is that we tell ourselves, well, next time I just won't lose my keys. Except that's not a real solution. That's the equivalent of someone telling us to just focus.

What this means is that when we're asking ourselves these questions, we need to reject the easy answer to question our own answers. Okay, next time I won't lose my keys. Well, how am I going to do that? Maybe if I had a place to put them away, like a basket by the door. Okay. Well, how am I going to remember to put them there?

well, maybe I could put up a comically, large sign above the basket that says, "keys go here." great. And then when are we going to actually be putting the keys in the basket. As soon as I get in the door. Okay. And what are you going to do if you don't? If I see them anywhere else, I'll pick them up and then I'll re-go through that whole going through the door process and put them in the basket so that I train my brain to always do that, when I'm coming in.

Awesome. Now what's our backup plan going to be? Maybe I could get a tile or something similar for my keys so I can find them when I misplaced them.

All right. This does sound like a lot of work, just to make sure that we're not losing our keys, but we can use this process for all those things in life where we're going to have these hang-ups.

Why do I always procrastinate on certain tasks?

how can I get myself to put away my laundry more regularly?

How can I eat more healthy food?

The key here is to give yourself time to think these problems through and reject those initial easy answers. Of course, we also want to be refining this process as we go. We're probably not going to have all the right answers the first time through. So we need to give ourselves the grace to understand that this is a process and these are all iterations upon iterations, and eventually we'll find a way that works.

One of the ways that we can fail to ask questions is when we think we already know the answer to them. And I want to be clear here that this isn't a case where we're explicitly saying that we know the answer, but rather that we're not even really thinking the issue through. Often when we're thinking about a concept, we think we understand it far better than we actually do.

There was an excellent illustration of this in a study from the university of Liverpool in 2006, in which they asked participants to draw a bicycle.

And let's think about this task for a little bit right now. We all know what a bicycle looks like if you want to pause the podcast here for a second and draw your own, feel free just to remember to come back. Okay. So it's got a frame, a front wheel, a back wheel, some pedals and a drive chain.

I imagine most of us believe that we could fairly easily draw this bicycle And I know I've seen enough bicycles that I have a pretty good understanding of how they work, but I know that the times that I've drawn a bicycle myself, well, if I'd made that into a real object, it probably wouldn't move.

And this is what the study from the university of Liverpool found. People were confident that they knew how bicycle worked and that they could accurately draw the mechanics of that.

Yet in the drawings, there were plenty of errors that showed that participants weren't quite as knowledgeable as they believed. Things like connecting the drive chain from the front wheel to the back wheel. Nope, that's not how that works. Or putting the pedals on one of the wheels. Yeah. The pedals go in the middle and then the chain goes to the back.

What was being demonstrated in this study is the illusion of explanatory depth.

This is the idea that we think we actually know much more about things than we actually do. That while we believe we know how something works when we are put to the test of explaining, said thing, we, in fact, don't really know how to explain it.

And perhaps you did know how a bicycle works, but how about a toilet or a Velcro or a candle? for all of those things, I intrinsically believe I know how they work, but if push came to shove and I was asked to really explain that mechanism, well, Google is my friend here because I know there are absolutely parts that I just don't really understand.

I mean, I think I do, but where does the wax go? Are we just breathing it in until we ourselves become candles?

And this applies to all areas of our life. We often believe that we understand something far more than we actually do. This isn't about us trying to save face and acting like we're smart.

This is just a far deeper facet of being a person. We often don't realize what we don't know. And the importance of this in the context of this conversation is that this illusion often keeps us from asking questions because we believe we already know what's going on.

One of the places I often get caught is when I'm asked if I have any question. I'll be out doing some activity, someone will explain what we're doing and then ask for questions. And I know at that instant, I'm not going to have any questions, but as soon as we start, well, then I'm going to have a boatload of questions because I'm suddenly presented with the fact that I didn't actually understand things as much as I thought I did.

this always happens to me at doctor's appointments. They'll walk me through something and then ask if I have any questions. Usually I feel like, yeah, I know what's going on here. I get this. And then later I'll be talking to someone else and they'll ask me a very basic question and they'll have no idea.

How could I have not asked about that? This seems like very important information.

One way to help deal with this is to write up potential questions you might have beforehand so that if they don't get answered, you have something to jog your memory. But what I've been doing more recently is just being honest and upfront about what's going on and let them know that I probably will have questions later and see if I can contact them when that comes up. It's not a perfect system, but I know in the moment, there's not a lot, that's going to change my mental state.

So it's important to just roll with reality.

Another area that we should also think about is the when of asking questions. While I agree with the idea that we can question everything. It isn't really practical for everyday life As I mentioned earlier, we often stick with answers because they are the way things are.

We don't question the way we do things because, well, that's the way we do them and that can lead to a lot of stagnation. But on the other hand, that's okay. Sometimes perhaps even most of the time, because questioning everything would be exhausting and completely derail our day. Part of this comes from the fact that there are a lot of things that we can question that we have no control over.

For example, I could be sitting in traffic and wondering if the stoplights are designed in an optimal way. And of course they're not because they don't take into account people who are red-green colorblind and if there's no way to control the traffic flow, you know what, I'm going to digress here

And sure, it's fine for me to wonder this idly in traffic, but if I'm doing that for absolutely everything I'm going to see,

is there a better way to design doors?

What if instead of sitting, we strapped ourselves into car standing up, right?

What if instead of roads, we just had tunnels everywhere.

What if I had a silly straw for my coffee, so I didn't have to use my hands to take a sip while I'm driving.

what if I just worked from home? So I didn't have to commute

and that's just five minutes into being in the car, but of course, maybe some of those questions are actually useful. Perhaps that coffee silly-straw yet would be great. Or maybe it was the commute one that I liked Because it is useful to questions. So the things that we do have control over, but here's where things get even trickier with ADHD. We naturally have a lot of questions in our mind because just so many ideas are flying in there at once.

And sometimes our questions can just be another form of procrastination. What if there was just an easier way to do this kind of questions? This is absolutely a great question to ask, but not always while we're doing the thing, this is something that has led me astray many times.

I'll start working on something and go, "oh, I bet there's a better way of doing this." And then spend two hours setting up the better way only to realize there was a reason I was doing things in the original way. And so for something that would have taken me 20 minutes, I've now wasted my entire afternoon.

this happens to me a lot when I'm cleaning and putting things away, I'll have a great idea of how to reorganize all of this and then proceed to stop cleaning and do the reorganization. And meanwhile, the cleaning doesn't get done and perhaps I make an even worse mess. So here we can stop and instead, ask more questions, questions like, does this need to happen right now?

And then are you sure? Because it really doesn't seem like it.

And I know it's hard to stop when you get that flash of insight that says, "Hey, I know a better way to do this". And oftentimes I do know a better way to do things. It's just that I rarely come up with that answer in the moment. That's just my brain finding ways for me to avoid doing something or to try and create more novelty in the situation.

Think about it this way. let's go with that organization example again, we have this flash of insight on how we could reorganize, but instead of doing it right then we could write that idea down and we finished putting away the stuff we need to put away because that stuff is going to need to be put away anyway.

And I'm saying this now, because I know this is something that's going to come up for me as I put away my Halloween decorations later this week. Now we have that idea of how we could reorganize, but is it something that we actually want to do? Well, now that I'm not in the moment, I don't know if I particularly want to reorganize the Halloween decorations, and then I have to question, is it just that I don't have the momentum now or is it also because, well, I just don't actually care if it happens. I don't have enough Halloween decorations where they need a particularly special organization method. They just need to be together, which they already are.

In the moment, it is easy for us to think that we've got a great idea, an important idea. But in reflection, it's not nearly as important, or even as urgent as I once thought

It's hard for our ADHD brains to properly prioritize things. And so things that are happening now often seem like they're the most important thing. But let's say after reflection, I did want to reorganize my Halloween decorations. Well, now that I'm not in the moment, it's a lot easier for me to figure out what parts of this actually need to happen instead of just doing this as an impromptu project, I can make this into a real project that I actually plan out. This is important because it will allow me to give the time it deserves. And more importantly, it makes it way more likely to become a project that I finish.

In both cases, this reorganization is a project, but in the first case, there is no plan. And I'm way more likely to end up halfway through when I realized I need to go do something else and have to just leave it halfway finished until next Halloween.

I'm not saying that just having a plan ahead of time is going to guarantee that I finished that project. But it will help me create scope and figure out when I actually have time to do it and then dedicating time to actually finishing it.

All of this, to say that yeah, questioning things is great to do, but we shouldn't let ourselves impulsively run off with it.

Not always an easy task because we don't call it impulsivity because of our reserved and careful nature. But when we at least give things, some forethought as in, "Hey, this might make me want to do something impulsive," that can help mitigate some of those tendencies.