ADHD

Monkey-see, monkey-do is a powerful survival skill. For neurotypical people, it's easy to just reproduce learned behaviors, without the reasoning behind them. I find interesting parallels with generative AI. You see it a lot in creative pursuits especially. So many people totally miss subtext. I think you also see it a lot while driving.

And it's largely an education problem. There's no reason neurotypicals can't think critically, but it's much easier to teach them to just slot into a role without any real understanding (Religion is very good at this). I think that's also the reason conventional education can be so difficult for people that aren't neurotypical. It's meant to teach you what to do, not why

I definitely find myself to be at an advantage compared to most neurotypical people I have worked with. In aggregate though, the ease they have moving with the flow can end up being more of an advantage in the long term, especially in largely neurotypical spaces. It can be very frustrating

Got slammed for asking why for context. Ended up in the O room for “being too smart”

Funnily enough, I somehow stumbled my way to sergeant, also graduating primus of my class in the NCO school, by actively breaking the unwritten assumptions and “traditions” (habitually, not intentionally) and was consistently rated the most competent and, I think this is the more important aspect, liked / respected by both those below and those above me, out of my entire company. Only segment I consistently got somewhat worse ratings was peers, I.e other NCOs, especially on the respect part (they too did concede the competence despite all) which kind of makes sense, since I wouldn’t do all the yelling or excessive barrack rule hawking or whatever, which, all of it basically, always seemed counterproductive to me. But would make the others look bad when my squad wouldn’t have to suffer that nonsense daily… I made sure my squad would present cleanly and know their shit, just by being there with them, doing just that. It’s easier to just go along with someone else, when they go first, than listening to someone not doing said thing tell you to do the thing without them themselves doing it. But I digress.

Just my anecdote about the cliche of “don’t think” attitude in army. It works, perhaps that’s why it is a thing, but I would suggest that it might not be the only thing that works, and, maybe some other paradigms would work much better, if only given chance.

And the more immediate thing I wanted to convey: Not everyone in the army (depends on your country of course though) is the same, and there were, back then during my time, and almost certainly now too, different people doing different things. Especially when you go down to squad level and NCOs, there’s a lot of room for variety in ways to do things and handle stuff.

The twist? I was unmedicated the entire time, too. No diagnosis (did get one pretty much right after when I went to uni, before that I was 100% sure I didn’t have adhd or anything, I was just weird and lazy on important stuff, extremely non-lazy on useless stuff… the entire thing was an accident after I went through the fallout from a burnout with a psychiatrist and therapists, who unpromptedly marched my ass to adhd tests and ran months worth of interviews with family and teachers I had when I was child and all…), though everyone above joked about it all the time because I would stay up late into night just obsessing on some equipment inventory or whatever reports, often just voluntarily doing platoon level stuff too, when the second lieutenants would be too lazy to do them in the first place, or I didn’t like the way they omitted a lot of important stuff in the reports they’d almost always run by me (yeah my hyperfocus and excessive energy was very much abused and I did burn out pretty bad just before I left for reserves). With medication? I think I might have just been one of the other NCOs, telling the guys not to think, and treat them as people not capable of thinking. No way to know now, but, I left my active service with best grades and ratings of my company both from below and above (but still not peers…), so I would claim that perhaps we’d do well to give more chance for new ideas and neurountypical flavor on things.

But I should also add that I never went on tour or anything. Our country only has defense forces, so active service meant mainly education and training, both myself but mostly for those just doing the service without stripes. Not sure how this would’ve fared in an actual stressful situation and environment.

But I will say, I was extremely good in chaotic situations, which seems is a common thing with adhd peeps in general. It was very easy for me to take control of a chaotic or messy situation that, like always, went somehow to shit and required improvisation. Perhaps because I would just act, and have a lot of ideas about what to do next, pretty much at all times. I didn’t really stop to think, which of course could’ve lead to some better choices, but I found, same as those above apparently, it’s better to make a choice and act fast on your feet, than to make the best choice but having to stop and think.

But this became a weird tangent. Sorry about that. Point is, “don’t think” is not the only way these things work. Sometimes “think too much and constantly” is just as good, if not better, when coupled with the adhd parallelism of action and thought.

Edit: Perhaps worth it to add, I was very bad at shooting despite very hard training and will to excel. The usual grunt stuff, I really didn’t manage past average. But that might be why they forced me to NCO path despite my strong messaging about my strong desire not to do that. I’m pretty sure adhd plays a part in that. Individually I’m not a very good soldier. But at the helm of a squad, it takes a very different set of skills, which really shines, in my opinion, with the usual adhd traits.