I have a theory. As I have been growing and changing as a person over these last few months, after starting medication that is, I have found that I am obsessing with small things in my life. Now why have I done such? Well in the case of ADHD it is quite literally in the name. Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder; I have a Attention Deficit, and Hyperactivity. I hyper focus on intricate details and can produce amazing results. I am “detail oriented” as they would say in the business world. This is honestly a good thing, it has allowed me to do some incredible things! I love it for the most part. I am literally, built different. But the obsessions I have with small things turn into big things that dominate my life, when medicated I can properly identify these problems and can correct. I absolutely love this! It makes me happy that I am more aware of my flaws and I can change them. I think positive change is the best, I love changing and evolving as a person. It makes me super happy seeing where I was and where I have gotten too. Progress is incredible to view from the future. I also know that I am not done changing. Never in fact, if you stop changing you stagnate. I stagnated for too long I say! So how do we address these changes? How do we correct as people? I think I have found a solution for me and my ADHD brethren.

Make marginal changes! Wow, shows over everyone go home! No but seriously, as someone who hyper fixates on small details I’ve come to realize that if I hyper fixate on small seemingly insignificant details in my own life I can positively change them for the better. Now what in the world does that mean? So, to break down stuff for the more technical people lets discuss this in forms of percents. Those who get it without percents, please feel free to skim ahead. The percent explanation: go 100% on 1% of your life. If you 100% something that is seemingly teeny tiny in the grand scheme of things, you will get so good at that tiny 1% thing, that you no longer have to care about doing it 100% because it will become so automatic that its essentially a reflex. I think of ourselves as made up of these little 1% fractional behaviors, your made up of a absolute shit ton of them. Most of them are good, some of them are bad. It is up to you to sort out the bad and good, often you figure it out based on your surroundings.

For instance, a quick anecdote from me to illustrate what I mean. My absolutely wonderful significant other has been annoyed to shit with the fact that I refer to things based upon their proper names, not the common names. The best example is when discussing my kitchen wear, I correct people apparently with the nomenclature of objects in my kitchen. I reference knives as paring knife, cheese knife, bread knife, and chef knife. Or my bowls by their specific names, such as my ramekins. To me, in my brain those are the names for things and I should be referring to them as their specific name as I know their specific name. I forget that not everyone has as much cool chef knowledge as I do, so I have been informed that I am a pompous pretentious ass when it comes to these things as I correct people in a rather rude manner. I did not think this was a big deal, as for me I thought “hey I am using its correct name, so should others.” No, I am just being flat out rude to people about stuff. Yes, it is good to know the names, but correcting and being weird about it isn’t something I should continue doing. My wonderful significant other has brought this to my attention, at first I was defensive. But now, after thinking about it for a while I have come to realize I was wrong. It is a fair assertion that I am overly pompous with my technical jargon on many things and rudely correct people. As such has been brought to my attention, I am now striving to work it out of my interactions. Opting instead to be more laymens terms and not correcting others as much. Yes it will take time, but it is time well worth spent.

This is what I mean when I say 100% on 1%. If you identify a minute problem in yourself and you dedicate to solving that problem, you will have altered a small part of yourself for the better. Most of us can identify very large problems in our lives, they feel so big that we cannot change them. But if you identify the smaller problems that contribute to the larger problems then you can fix the bigger problems in your life. The entirety of you as a person is built with small quirks that make up your bigger personality. I think of us being made up of these 1% things, and that they contribute to our overarching personality and mannerisms. If you are dissatisfied with how you are as a person overall, take the steps to correct the discrepancy in the view of yourself. Start by changing those 1% differences by actively striving 100% to make the 1% change. Now there might be 250 things your trying to change, and the math says that that is 250% but that doesn’t matter. The 1% was an invention to get you to understand that small marginal changes will effect overall changes. We as humans hate changes inherently, its way people hate politics or violent changes in behavior. If you try to change yourself all at once you will commit for like a week then bounce back and be on the same old shit. If you change the trajectory of your life little by little here and there you won’t be noticing massive shifts in your world. You can psych yourself out by changing all at once, if you do it little by little, 1% by 1% you can get to where you want to go. Now, it will take time. And it will require you to be open to understanding that certain things do need to change. The constructive criticism from others should be taken into account; notice I said constructive. Not everyone gives constructive criticism, and not everyone give constructive criticism in the healthiest of ways. This is alright, just be able to delineate the positive stuff.

Thank you for reading my theory, I think it is less of a theory and more of a guide, but like I am bias so lets just call it a theory for right now.

-Ben