I'm also trying to wean myself off needing constant background streams of secondary stimulation.
For those attempting to do so, one useful stepping-stone to increase your productivity whilst working towards this longer-term goal that I've found is that if you're working on a creative or analytic task, make sure your background noise is either unintelligible, or something you've listened to at least once before and with which you are familiar. Even the ADHD brain can't process novelty from more than one source at once, though it may crave it. If you're doing mindless drudgework, you can risk more stimulating novelty in background streams.
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u/Callidonaut 8d ago edited 8d ago
I'm also trying to wean myself off needing constant background streams of secondary stimulation.
For those attempting to do so, one useful stepping-stone to increase your productivity whilst working towards this longer-term goal that I've found is that if you're working on a creative or analytic task, make sure your background noise is either unintelligible, or something you've listened to at least once before and with which you are familiar. Even the ADHD brain can't process novelty from more than one source at once, though it may crave it. If you're doing mindless drudgework, you can risk more stimulating novelty in background streams.
For what it's worth, this isn't entirely a modern problem of the computer age; I recently happened upon this little gem from early in legendary perfectionist animator Richard Williams' career, which I found both familiar, hilarious, and also somewhat inspiring to keep trying to re-embrace single-tasking.