ADHD as Attention Variability, Not Deficit
It has taken me a long time to accept that some days I will easily surpass productivity expectations while, on others, I will drool on my keyboard until I pack it in and take my hammock to the park. I mean, seriously people, why can’t my brain perform reliably every day of the week? Or at least 11 months out of 12? I could be a CEO or the Prime Minister by now if it did.
“Have you ever asked yourself, If I can do the thing, why don’t I just DO the thing?!”
Is ADHD Even an Attention DEFICIT?
So why do we call ADHD an attention deficit disorder if the main problem is consistent access to the capacity to focus and get shit done? In this article, I argue that ADHD would be more accurately conceptualized as AVID: Attention Variability and Intensity Difference.
“Not only does AVID take the deficit out of ADHD, it better captures the motivational drivers of the ADHD brain:
interest, novelty, and urgency.“
Our motivation and attention, rather than being based on our brain’s reward centers, are interest, stimulation, novelty, context, and urgency-based.
“Um, why should I care about this uninspired make-work project? Why bother starting another pointless task? Wait, did I do it already and, if so, where the $@#!%! did I put it?”
We have likely all heard about the biochemical differences in the ADHD brain that impact the reward structure, motivation, and working memory. Attention, motivation, arousal, inhibition, working memory, and the ability to initiate tasks are regulated by interconnected brain networks that rely heavily on neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine.
Dopamine helps the brain assess reward, motivation, salience, and the expected payoff of an action, while norepinephrine helps regulate alertness, arousal, attention, and the ability of the prefrontal cortex to stay engaged with a goal. Serotonin has been implicated in ADHD in relation to impulse control and GABA, the brain’s primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, is part of the larger network that helps regulate neural activity and maintain an appropriate balance between excitation and inhibition.
But it isn’t just about a neurotransmitter being too high or too low. It’s the regulation of the neural circuits whose settings can produce very different levels of arousal, motivation, inhibition, and attention from one situation to another. When the regulatory system is dysregulated, the settings fail to support optimal attention and cognitive control.
For us AVID ADHD’ers, these differences in neurotransmitter signalling may help explain why our attention can swing like chimpanzees between over- and under-attention; between obsessive hyperfocus and la la land.
It’s no wonder our attention varies moment to moment, activity to activity, day to day.
AVID ADHD’ers couldn’t care less whether pressing
the lever delivers a food pellet or an electric current
in the cafe of late stage post-industrial capitalism,
unless that pellet is delivered by a group of
performing hyenas dressed in mumus on roller skates
with dance moves choreographed to Bad Bunny.
Those same differences can also contribute to ways of thinking that are highly adaptive in some environments. Because of the tendency of our neurotransmitters to dance to their own tune, we are some of the most creative, entrepreneurial, progressive thinkers who not only move our own lives forward, but pull the rest of the chimps along with us, sourcing out new food sources, new territories, and new ways of thinking.
According to the neurodiversity movement, our brains provide evolutionary advantages to the human species. For instance, it was the ADHD cave dweller who ran around eating every mushroom in sight who taught the tribe which mushrooms wouldn’t kill them, and which would. When out-of-the-box thinking is needed to solve problems humanity has boxed itself into, whose ideas are needed to find a way out?
We see differently. We come up with different solutions.
We enable survival. Our brains are surely needed now
more than ever.
It’s not easy being this amazing. Yet sometimes it can feel like our brain is our own worst enemy. So how do we navigate our consistent inconsistencies?
If ADHD were an attention deficit, the obvious solution would be to increase attention. But if the problem isn’t too little attention but lack of reliable access to the right amount of attention at the right time, we need different solutions.
If ADHD attention is variable, the goal isn’t to make it constant. The goal is to become better at working
with the variability.
For anyone who has tried a strategy they found online, or in a self-help book aimed at neurotypical people, you’ll recognize the feeling. It sounds good, you’re motivated, you try it, and it’s like pulling teeth. That’s what working against your brain feels like. Working with your brain begins with neurodivergent neuroscience, such as taking into account how the ADHD brain’s motivation system works, how the autistic nervous system processes sensory input, or how reward and novelty function differently for us.
Then, we build strategies that are designed around those realities. If you’re motivated by novelty, a rigid daily routine is never going to stick. If you need predictability, a constantly changing system will exhaust you. The science gives us real insight into how to build a life that actually works for YOU.
How do we do that?
We can start experimenting with the variables that influence it:
- Interest: Can I make the task more interesting, meaningful, playful, social, competitive, or connected to something I care about?
- Novelty: Can I change the environment, sequence, sensory input, tools, location, or way I approach the task?
- Urgency: Can I create an artificial deadline, accountability, timer, appointment, body-double, or immediate consequence?
- Stimulation: Can I add music, movement, tactile input, visual stimulation, or another compatible source of stimulation?
- Structure: Can I reduce the number of decisions my brain has to make?
- Externalization: Can I get the task, reminder, memory, or sequence out of my head and into the environment?
- Recovery: Am I trying to demand sustained output from a brain that is already depleted?
What are the brain hacks that make your brain more likely to “do the thing”?
Sometimes the solution is to make the boring thing more interesting. Sometimes it is to make the deadline more immediate. Sometimes it is to eliminate five unnecessary steps between having the intention to do something and actually doing it.
Sometimes the brain hack is recognizing that today is simply not a ‘rocket-science’ day.
Perhaps the most important shift is the one from blame to curiosity. “If you can do it, why don’t you just do it?” assumes that ability and access to ability are the same thing.
For an ADHD brain, they aren’t.
From an AVID point of view, an ADHD brain isn’t a brain that can’t pay attention. It’s a brain whose access to attention is variable.
Ready to Start Understanding and Stop Fighting Your Brain?
At Scattergram, our goal isn’t to teach ADHD’ers how to become less ADHD. It’s to help us understand our AVID brains, reduce the shame that others impose and we internalize, and develop strategies for building lives that work with our neurotype.
Our therapists work from a neurodiversity-affirming approach that doesn’t treat ADHD as something you need to overcome or hide. Therapy can help you understand your particular patterns of attention, motivation, executive functioning, relationships, and self-regulation—and develop strategies that actually fit the way your brain works.
Want to understand your own attention patterns better?
Meet with one of our therapists to explore your neurodivergence, self-understanding, and the patterns that shape how your brain works.
Want Want to explore it with other neurodivergent people?
Our groups offer opportunities to learn, share experiences, develop practical strategies, and discover that you are far from the only person whose brain works this way.
Want practical strategies to work with your attention rather than fight it?
Start with the Check-In Corner, a space for understanding your attention patterns, setting goals for working with it, and a structure to hold you accountability.
Want more ideas about working with your AVID ADHD brain?
See our “How to Surf your ADHD Brain” article, infographic and worksheet.
The goal isn’t to flatten the wave. It’s to learn how to surf.
Want a quick infographic summary of this article that you can easily share?
Consistently Inconsistent: Introducing AVID as a Way of Understanding the ADHD Brain
As ADHD’ers, we’ve been told that our inattention is the cause of many of our problems when, in fact, our access to attention is simply driven by different things. We can reduce our own frustration and achieve our goals more easily when we use strategies that work with our AVID brains.
Takeaways:
ADHD attention is not lacking - it's variable
Interest, novelty, and urgency, rather than task importance, are ADHD motivational drivers
Differences in reward structure are caused by the dysregulation of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, norephinephrine, seratonin, and GABA
AVID takes the deficit out of ADHD and focuses our attention on fluctuations in the brain’s ability to recruit the neural networks needed to initiate, sustain, and regulate attention.
To work with your AVID ADHD, try experimenting with the variables that influence it: interest, novelty, urgency, structure, stimulation, externalization, and recovery
We can help you understand your brain patterns better and find the brain hacks that work for you!
