My wife is huge fan of media that takes place in the 1800s, and while watching shows like Little House on the Prairie, Dr. Quinn, or the various Yellowstone prequels, I started thinking about living in those times, and specifically, living with ADHD.
I don't know if this is necessary but: I'm not trying to insult or shame here. We all know that we have challenges, and whatever comes after this, or possibly in the comments, is just assumptions on what these challenges looked like through the lens of your typical person in the 1800s.
That being said, I suspect that there wasn't a lot of successful ADHDers in history.
Imagine living out on the prairie, and animals need fed and milked daily. The crops need planted by a certain time in order to to be ready for harvest, but not too early that they'll frost and die, and they also need frequent attention. A trip to your neighbors takes twenty minutes and going into town takes two hours. Preparing a complicated meal can be an all day process, and not even basic meals can be tossed together in less than an hour. No refrigeration means no stocking up on perishables, and leftovers are only good for a few hours. And to top it all off, nobody has ever heard of ADHD, let alone any medication, therapy or understanding for it.
Thinking about myself in those situations, I'd especially miss my phone: Reminders, calendars, alarms, being able to look back at what was said in a email or text conversation, and being able to pay my bills or check my bank account the moment I think about them, no matter where I am. I feel like I'd be lost and forgetting everything all the time.
Makes me wonder if the cliche Town Drunk character has ADHD. Chasing dopamine and is able to get by well enough that he can buy his booze and a bed to sleep in, but he's never really able to keep his shit together long enough to get any further ahead.
Not sure where I intended the conversation to go, but it was something I was thinking about, and I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on the topic. Could you have survived in the 1800s? Are there any careers that ADHD might have been helpful, or at least not as debilitating?
Yeah exactly. Village life is much different than modern life.
I grew up in a "village". Oh fuck did I feed the cows? Angry mooing in the background. The animals let you know your mistake. Loudly. The consistent routine also makes it easy to become instinct. You do the same thing every day for months, you don't need an app anymore. You walk past the shed, oh yeah I forgot to fix that roof, and you fix it right there. You see something, you fix it. It's all automatic in a way. Oh yeah the eggs, you go get the eggs and eat them.
Compare that to modern life. If you forget to send that email to your boss, nothing happens until 3 days later, you get in trouble, and that interrupts your current task, causing a failure cascade. You have to remember a million things every day that changes. But I bet you don't forget which bus or how to drive to work, right? And you always do the same things after work too without forgetting?
Edit: also of course the community. You have extended family and the rest of the village to help you and you help them. It all gives life structure. You work together on bigger jobs, and it just kind of happens. You don't need a planner, you just do it.
I'd say people with ADHD are actually really good at farm life. Just in modern life the cows changes buildings every week, the chickens lay eggs on a rotating schedule, you have to carefully schedule and co-ordinate roof fixes with a multidisciplinary team, and you have to constantly consult the calendar to remember what your actual job is today.