After my initial experience with methylphenidate, I thought about how to best describe the effect of this drug. In this context, I came up with the metaphor of the cone of attention. My hope is that the neurotypical among my readers better understand the effect of this rather effective drug.
As I mentioned in my initial post, I am struggling with paying attention to topics or issues I find uninteresting. Perhaps my not so proud moments include zoning out or, in rare cases, even dozing off when hanging out with the oh-so-great friends of some random chick I was seeing. I solved that problem by avoiding such situations or setting very hard time limits. In addition, I tend to put off some chores and I normally find ways to get out of uninteresting busy work, which may or may not include causing a stir at work over TPS reports.
As you may imagine, ignoring or avoiding mundane tasks is not always the best coping strategy. However, to a lesser extent this also happens when I work on something I do want to do. For instance, I can often write an article for my blog quite quickly, but I can get sidetracked during the initial research and during proof-reading or revising. These steps are certainly less creative, but they also need to be one, at least if you hold yourself to a certain standard.
A very interesting aspect of methylphenidate is that you are a lot more likely to simply finish your work, in addition to doing it a lot faster. I detailed how quickly I wrote the various blog posts I published on the weekend, while this drug was working its magic. There are many other consequences. For instance, before I sat down to write this article, not long after I had taken a pill of methylphenidate, I recalled that I wanted to wash our bed sheets, so I pulled them off. Then I put them in the laundry collector, and because it was now full, I walked downstairs to the washing machine and started a load. Yet, the likelihood that I would just have bailed at any of these steps otherwise is quite high. One step literally led to another, telling myself that now that the laundry collector is full, I may as well carry it down to the basement, and after I had put it down, I thought that I could just put a load in the washing machine. This did not necessarily feel good or release some endorphins, but it did not feel like some mindless chore I wanted to indefinitely put off.
In the title of this post, I use the term “cone of attention”, and to my dismay, this is not a new concept but, as I found out. Others have used it before, but perhaps somewhat differently. Still, it is a quite useful concept. Without methylphenidate, I have a wider cone of attention and it is quite possible that a more interesting task sidetracks me. This is why I sometimes, albeit not often, abandon an article I am working on after the first draft is done, and then I forget about it, but may stumble upon it months or perhaps even years later, revise it, and publish it. This is not a major problem but certainly something I have experienced on occasion.
I should also add that I consider myself quite productive, if not highly productive. I am not a slacker at all. Of course, I am placing a veil of secrecy over my real-world achievements, but just the fact that I have written millions of words over the years is quite unusual. I have written more in my spare time than many people who write professionally have in their day job. On the other hand, there is the fact that I am, or was, not nearly as productive as I perhaps could be. This used to not bother me a lot. In fact, there are oft-repeated statements that humans can only effectively be productive for four hours a day, etc. In fact, if my psychiatrist had not suggested testing whether I fulfill the criteria for ADHD, it would not even have occurred to me to go down this particular route as it was not part of my self-image.
Perhaps the best way to describe the effect of methylphenidate is that you have a narrower cone of attention, which you can control much more easily. Without it, you may find yourself getting distracted by your phone, your girlfriend, some notes you have left on your desk, or simply a tab in your browser that sends you down another rabbit hole. In contrast, on methylphenidate I pick a task and just do it. I do not think that this drug makes it easier to motivate myself. However, with it you are able to much more easily, and much faster, finish what you wanted to do. You telling yourself, “I’ll do this later!” turns into, “Let me get this out of the way right now!”