ADHD and Creativity: A Superpower with Kryptonite | James Fell | TEDxTirguMures

So a couple years ago, my son was checking my Netflix profile and he watched a bunch of shows that I had only watched for less than five minutes each and he looked at me and said, Dad, it turns out your ADHD is him. Just last year I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and after receiving that diagnosis I was like, well, that shirt explains why growing up I always hated gym class and I hated all my other classes too, but at least as a Daydream . Through that, but it's kind of hard to fantasize about being a superhero or slaying dragons when you have a dodgeball coming at your head at 50 miles an hour, so I wasn't a good student.

I definitely wasn't an athlete, but later on I actually got a couple of master's degrees and ended up being a pretty popular fitness writer, so it's funny how that worked out, but the transition to that success wasn't easy at all because, you know, when I was a kid, they bullied me and told me I was lazy and stupid. a loser, a lot of it had to do with being part of a school system that placed a lot of emphasis on sustained attention and memorization, which are things that people with ADHD are not very good at and that affects their self-esteem. so I couldn't wait to finish school after high school.

I went out and worked a variety of different jobs and I didn't really like that either, so after a couple of years I said, well, I'll go to college and I, uh, I went to college and I tried it and it probably started to fail, but then there was an encounter that changed my life, uh, you're familiar with those romantic movies, those cheesy movies where there's a guy and he's like up there and there's this amazing woman who comes into his life and changes his life some people see those movies and they say oh other people watch those movies and throw up um I won't see which one I am uh anyway there was this amazing woman and she changed my life, she was a straight A student, I wanted to go to medical school and I thought I was deeply in love with her and I was worried that if I didn't get myself together and stop failing college, that would be it.

It wasn't going to work so I suddenly felt very motivated to become a man that she could be proud of and luckily at that moment I took a history class with this very dynamic and attractive professor and I was enthralled and I realized I found my thing and took all the history courses they allowed me and worked very hard and did well. I ended up getting a master's degree in that, so what does this have to do with ADHD? Well, ADHD is a reward deficiency that we don't have. We don't have enough of those happy hits of the dopamine hormone in our brain, so we go and look for it, and if we find a good source of dopamine, we can go a little overboard and focus on it, like I did with the story, something else with ADHD is sometimes They engage in thrill-seeking behavior which unfortunately can lead to things like drug and alcohol abuse and even participating in very dangerous sports and yes, that sounds a little familiar, but after the MA in History I thought I had to get a job so I worked my way through an MBA and worked in marketing for about a dozen years which allowed me some creative thinking, it wasn't very exciting, what I really wanted to do is being a writer and I had really gotten into the fitness thing along the way and I thought I'd become a fitness writer, that'll be more exciting, it'll give me that hit of dopamine that I need.

It didn't pay that well, although the girlfriend I mentioned I wanted. I went to medical school, well she did and we got married and I highly recommend to all aspiring writers marrying a doctor makes that career a lot easier so I worked really hard to make my fitness articles interesting, funny and engaging, and before long I had columns in the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune that were being republished in major newspapers around the world, so not only did I have this creative outlet for my career, but I was feeling something of that emotion in seeking to be recognized for what it was I thought so the question is whether people with ADHD are more likely to be creative and the research suggests that yes, probably, growing up I was always distracted, you know, my mind was on the clouds, I daydreamed telling myself stories and you know, people made fun of me. of me for that, so I didn't like it very much about myself, but divergent thinking, which is the ability to generate a wide variety of ideas from a single starting point, is a critical component of

creativity

and people with ADHD whose Minds go everywhere. maps are really good for divergent thinking, it's that whole concept of thinking outside the box, so I have strange thoughts and I write down some of those thoughts and some people like it.

I guess another connection between ADHD and

creativity

is how prior knowledge can limit you. acts as an obstacle, so I'll give you an example: Imagine I tell someone to think of an alien creature from another world and they probably think of something that you know maybe has arms, legs, eyes and a mouth, and you know it Might. add some pointy ears or a bulging forehead, kind of like Star Trek, but it will still look a little like something we see here on Earth every day because that prior knowledge is limiting your creativity, but people with ADHD are much better just setting that obstacle of Unfortunately, letting go of prior knowledge and finding something really strange, the better they are at that kind of creative problem solving, the more likely they are to have problems with distraction and impulsivity, talking about being impulsive after About a decade into building a solid reputation as a fitness writer all of a sudden on a whim I said I'm done with that.

Now I'm writing history, uh, with bad words because I'm impulsive and sometimes when I'm really excited or maybe angry, the best word to use is waffle, so, uh, that transition happened in 2020. If you remember anything about that year, it was a fucking ass NATO, I was fair and I was stressed, but it was a typewriter I was producing. I was posting a story full of bad words each. day and very quickly it took off, it was being read by millions of people, not only did I start making a lot of money, so you would think I would be happy, but no, I was a ball of anxiety, my heart would sometimes start pounding . there's no reason for me to feel chest tightness, skin tingling, trouble sleeping and I didn't know it at the time but the most common comorbidity of ADHD is anxiety so what I do right is I worked harder not only in writing but also in promoting my sales writing. build my social networks sell more books sell more paid subscriptions make more money and uh and yeah that didn't help that actually made things worse and uh Then I read some research that was really a lightbulb moment for me and that compares to people who They don't have it, people with ADHD who engage in a creative endeavor will work harder if there is a path, if they are competing for a reward, so I was competing for the reward. of making more and more money and it was driving me crazy so I needed to get to the root of my anxiety so I started doing math.

I was diagnosed with moderate ADHD and was prescribed Ritalin and Ritalin under the generic name. It's methylphenidate so I looked and said oh great I'm doing meth now my wife the doctor said you're not doing meth she explained to me that methyl has something to do with a carbon atom bonded to hydrogen atoms. I got distracted. I forgot what she was saying after that Ritalin is a stimulant and it's a stimulant that helps me not get as distracted as I just did. There's a joke about people with ADHD who were so easily distracted that you know we can be in the middle of telling a story and a squirrel will walk by and we'll be oh squirrel, it's not the best analogy because I mean, come on, if I'm running around the stage right now, tell me you wouldn't be distracted anyway.

I don't quite understand the riddle. I take it to stop writing. I'll work five or six hours in the morning, then take a pill, and then walk away. I'll stop obsessing about my need to make more money and do other things like exercise and shower. and eat, but I have struggled with ADHD and medication helps me struggle less. uh you know, I said I was always distracted and it was something I didn't like about myself, now I have a little bit of a different perspective because you know it's not okay for me to say I'm grateful for having ADHD.

I'm not, you know it's kind of a creative

superpower

with a load of Kryptonite anxiety, but I'm living a great life right now and it may be due, at least in small part, to having ADHD. However, I realize that I am very lucky. Most people with ADHD aren't as lucky as I am, so I think we need to start thinking about things we can do beyond medication. the next generation of children growing up with ADHD are looking for different teaching and learning styles to help them become better and more creative and maybe by doing so we can make the world not only a better place but also a more creative place, thank you very much. a lot