Originally Posted by 2manybikes
As an observer, I have noticed some of the best technical people I know have ADD/ADHD. Is it just a coincidence? Or does the intense focus of learning something complicated help with the feeling of not being focused? It is interesting to me to learn that some of the Forum members that have provided me with a lot of good technical advice and accurate small details have ADD too. It seems like more than a coincidence. ???
Being AD/HD and having a parent who has worked in special education for many, many years, I can give my personal experience and her study/observation as this(in simplistic words, of course): people with ADD have a tendency (almost all, in fact) to be great with anything like geometry. If it can be seen/expressed in pictures or touched and felt, it's easily grasped. She told me the reason for it, but I can't remember it now.
For me it's almost as if my brain works faster than the rest of me can. If I'm hand writing something I'll often go back to read it and find I only the first letter of short words and parts of longer ones, t instead of the, for example. When I was a mechanic I would watch a machine with a problem and could find what was wrong with it before I even realized it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like being wired completely differently. Take a computer and add a couple more busses, take out some RAM, and you've basically got the AD/HD brain from those I have met. If that makes sense to anyone else...