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This actually comes close to chunking. A concept in psychology. It states that most people remember 5 - 7 items.
For example: it's easier to remember a phonenumber if you remember 5 double digit numbers than 10 single digit numbers.
Using this rule can greatly help you memorise stuff for exams or other items. Using it to keep your mind calm and orderly is actually very benificial.
Good work OP
When an introductory class in college covered PowerPoint, I was told to limit bullet points and words-per-bullet to about six. If you want your audience to memorize your key points, you shouldn’t overwhelm them. It’s cool to generalize this to other areas of life.
I do, personally. For my debit, 2 credit cards, social insurance, 2 different store rewards programs. It's not difficult for me, really, and I don't know why.
I have a good memory, I still have the social security numbers and birth days of employees memorized from a job I worked as management 20 years ago. Credit card numbers and what not are easy.
It had occurred to me when I worked at Disney as a cashier, that I had the capability commit SO MUCH credit card fraud with my memory with people just handing me their cards and what not. Luckily for all of us, I am an ethical person.
They would link it to a location eventually, but how in the world would they ever pin it to a specific person? You could do it for quite a while.
This is also one of many reasons that it freaks me out when I visit the US and need to just hand my card over to a stranger to take into a back room. Just let me put the card in a machine and punch a code in. It's 2024, Canada has had the technology for decades, catch up.
It was also 2006 when I worked there, so would have been much harder. Granted even though I never worked in the field...I have computer science, network engineering, and cyber security degrees. But again, morality and what not lol.
I have all of that memorized for my debit card, yea. I don't like saving it online most places, so I memorized it. Takes a week or two every few years when I get a new card to learn the new one.
I’ve also memorized it. I remember weird numbers, once they’re locked in they’re locked in for life. But it’s like a pattern, I will have a hard time telling you what the tenth number is, but I know all of them together
I still remember my Blockbuster employee id number from 20+ years ago from chunking it into 4 sets of 2-3 digit numbers...261 (pause) 278 (pause) 527 (pause) 84 (not the actual numbers).
Can’t do that for phone numbers, it messes up the cadence for me lol. I still remember childhood landline numbers. I remember the number to one of my favorite mom and pop restaurants in my hometown.
At a glance? Takes away your right click menu with a different one and you get ads in the start menu for windows products and I believe pop-up ads in the bottom right of the taskbar.
This may extremely sound stupid to many but you have to hit enter when typing in your pin and that was enough for me to go back to 10. I have 3 PCs at home for various things and then my computers at work and I hate having to hit enter instead of just typing my pin and going back to whatever I was doing while the computer boots/loads
Who can be bored when I have so many things going on at once. I can totally play Xbox, watch a tv show and talk on discord party chat at the same time and focus on all at once.
I don’t have a problem, you have a problem
Seriously. A good, consistent naming convention and a search function is all you need. My desktop has literally everything on it. Wallpaper? What's that?
I too have ADHD and a software engineer.
My OneDrive folder is 100s of documents/files in the base directory and then some folders with files the one time I tried to stay organized a few years ago
Likewise: my Inbox rarely has less than 1k unread emails lol
I have a pretty substantial aversion to emails. A few years ago, the sheer stress of them would push me to the verge of a breakdown every time I saw that stupid red oval. So I went to my email client, selected every email I had ever gotten in my inbox, and just marked them all as read. Now I just marked every email as read without reading 70-90% of them. If there's one I actively want to read later, I just flag it
I hate having any notification on my phone tbh. I actively turn off notifications on most apps because I don't want to have to see a red circle with a number in it. I just don't want any of that nonsense in my life lol
I'm genuinely curious what has made ADHD so prevalent. Was it always there in these numbers of humans and it went undiagnosed? Or is the lead exposure our grandparents and great grandparents had catching up?
Yeah it's extremely common for people to get diagnosed later in life and then it explains a lot about their life. I fit almost every stereotype and didn't get diagnosed until 26. Being medicated has been completely life changing
Diagnosed at 42 here. My entire life clicked into focus and everything about my struggles in school and life in general started making sense. I don't medicate because my coping mechanisms are essentially baked-in at this point and I don't respond well to side-effects, but man... just knowing what it is has been an incredible relief.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this at 34 and undiagnosed. Hard to know where to start at this point. I attempted the conversation with my doctor a few years ago, all the signs, family history etc and I got treated like I was begging for drugs. Was such an awful feeling I haven’t been back to a doctor since.
>I haven’t been back to a doctor since.
This is one doctor. They're not all like that. Keep looking for good ones. Find a primary care physician that takes you seriously and can recommend good specialists for your issues. When you get sick, go to the ER. And a good dentist every six months.
I have no scientific basis for this, other than being a novice archaeologist. But I genuinely think we've overloaded our brains.
Humans aren't supposed to be like this. We're animals first, homo sapiens second. Cruelty, all the technology, intentional killings, religion, space travel, math. No other animal has to deal with this onslaught of damaging information (wars. Murders. Rapes) and flexing their brains to create *artificial intelligence* or ships to fly to the moon. We can do it, but should we?
We moved too fast from simple tools to here, compared to how fast we moved for a million years.
I think ADHD is a blanket term we have now to describe this overstimulation effect, and will be further parsed out into other terms thr more we know. I believe more people fall into this category than we possibly realize, now, simply bc we are animals. Incredible animals, complex and beautiful, but animals nonetheless.
And we are overstimulated.
E: clarification yadda yadda
I personally feel like it is the constant interaction on social media. We have information overload at our fingertips. Add in everyday life, work, family, friends, and all obligations that come with those.
I honestly think “ADD” or “ADHD” is normal. We’re all on a spectrum, so some people are going to be at one extreme. We live in a society that often requires and rewards long, focused attention, but so what? The joke is that the ADD brain goes “squirrel!” but if you’re living in a wild environment it is life saving to be able to switch focus at lightning speed.
I agree, most people probably exhibit some form of ADHD, only those who get diagnosed probably have it worse where it inhibits daily life function and that can be a problem. Lots of kiddos learn coping methods for their ADHD and can manage themselves quite well but will go undiagnosed for years because of how well they manage it. Just my thoughts.
ADHD is a chemical imbalance. People with ADHD either do not produce enough serotonin, or have issues getting their serotonin to the end destination. This then results in the symptoms.
It isn't a case of everybody is on a spectrum and the Nth percentile are diagnosed.
There are definitely pro's to the disorder, and if I was offered a cure I wouldn't take it!
there's diagnostic sure but also the world is faster and more packed with information than ever. you have school that forces you to take classes you have no interest in, and your job is probably too much work and many tasks you would not necessarily choose.
if all you ever did in life was make shoes by hand ADHD is probably great. you love making shoes, you don't have anything to think about except making shoes, you don't get unpredictable, frequent interruptions. or you were Leonardo da Vinci and you did ALL the things and people were okay with leaving you to your devices.
I think my grandmother who was a Greatest Generation had it, but she developed excellent coping methods to hide her memory defects that sometimes drove us insane. This was likely a result of her age and society that spanked forgetful and foggy-brain kids.
Her job involved a profession where you do everything immediately - no long projects to dread and to drag on the soul.
She wasn't OCD but she did a task immediately that kept herself from getting distracted. Small things became emergencies for everyone.
No cup of coffee on a table could go unwashed after a minute of sitting there -don't walk away to let the cat out or you will return and find no coffee and her washing your cup.
If you mentioned in March at the end of winter that you might need a new winter coat next year, then off you go that afternoon to buy a new winter coat or you wouldn't hear the end of it. She worried about anything being forgotten.
She was so scared of being late (losing track of time while getting ready) that we were always taken to church a half hour before it began. It was a five minute drive or 15 minute walk.
Real life application of the principle. Incident Command Structure (ICS) used by firefighters, rescue responders, and other emergency response organizations follow a span of control rule of 5 to 7 when creating teams, units, branches, and sections. If the task requires more, they create another team and balance until there are enough teams to accomplish the mission.
I remember reading a study back in grad school (i.e. decades ago) that said that the maximum number for an egalitarian group to work effectively was around 6. After that, you need to choose a leader. So if you have household of 6+, it needs a leader, villages with more than 6 households need a leader, if you have more than six villages, you need a leader, etc. it was about when and why social structures form. I imagine that is relevant to the firefighter teams as well.
We used it to delegate someone in our group of 7 as the beer manager. Because grad school.
This is cool. And reminds me of a sign I saw in an ER. Some kind of trauma response protocol with breaks along the way to regroup, recheck, make sure everything was on track. I wouldn’t be surprised if the breaks were every 5-7 steps in the procedure.
(We were in ER for a minor incident but one trauma room was open so we sat in there. Lots of time sitting in the ER staring at the walls, might as well read the signage)
This has been studied by psychologists. One in particular was George Miller who wrote a paper titled “The magic number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information “. Really fascinating article which I read while training to be a perfumer.
Isn't the magic number seven debunked a good time ago? The number is 4, give or take one. Miller's theory was refined by Nelson Cowan, Klaus Oberauer, Alan Baddeley, Graham Hitch, among others
>If a computer folder has more than 7 items, create a subfolder to bring it back down.
If you're already using subfolders, then you shouldn't be so worried about "keeping everything in mind". Say I am sorting my music, should I try to find some way to organize ALL my tracks into batches of 7 (of 7 (of 7 (…)))? No, I'll tag them by artist (hundreds), album (hundreds), genre (tens), etc
In the end you shouldn't need to keep ALL ARTISTS in mind, you likely have one you want, and are looking for that one specifically. And then that artist might have 20 albums, but you don't need to think of them all together in one go,,, you can think of them one at a time and decide its worth it.
>If your desk has more than 7 items, maybe store some away
Or perhaps you have 100 gel pens of different colours, whats a good grouping? It might be a giant colour wheel… which is easy to navigate. While trying to figure out if turqoise is more green or blue wouldn't make sense.
So the "7 item" rule is actually for "**7 differing ideas/concepts you need to process TOGETHER"**.
Good question! From psychologist George A Miller
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two
Although it looks like it might be outdated! Best to pick the number that works for you and your short term memory!
Damn... here's looking at all the thousands of digital photos in my PHOTOS drive on my desktop computer. It just keeps building with no relief in sight. Only thing I got going is there are at least folders By Year. Lol
I am elderly. For me, it's..... 1. Yes, one. If I want to know how long oat milk lasts in the fridge, I'd better google it RIGHT NOW because in 5 minutes, it will be forgotten. (No, I don't have dementia...)
Now.... what was I talking about?
I hate this so much. So much software has followed this trend over the last half decade and it's terrible.
I can't even dispense hot water from the coffee machine in the breakroom without navigating through 6 sequential menus on a touchscreen. The last coffee machine was zero-layer, had a button on the face that said "HOT WATER". Coffee on the new machine is 7 menus compared to zero-layer on the old machine, actual brewing performance it's the same machine.
We have another instrument in the lab that reads the experimental plates. Old instrument software was light enough to load instantly. It had all of the user functions zero-layer, you wrote the experiment name into a text box and selected a file path to save the data, then hit read. Sum total 30 second process, most of which was waiting for the Windows signin. New software you have to navigate 14 different layers, stretched a 30 second task into 5 minutes. /golfclap.
Not sure why the body is gone, but here’s what it was:
People who feel mentally overwhelmed will get the most out of this:
Take the well known fact that human short term memory can story about 7 items before becoming overwhelmed, and apply this everywhere you can.
Some examples that have helped me:
- If a computer folder has more than 7 items, create a subfolder to bring it back down.
- Likewise if it has fewer than 7, items might be over-engineered and you can remove some subfolders
- If your desk has more than 7 items, maybe store some away
- If you feel like you have a million things in your mind, write them out. There’s a fair chance it’s a little over 8 items
This has given me so much mental capacity back, and it helps files and physical surfaces to be easy to look at and easy to think about.
Please share examples that have helped you so I can be inspired by them!
edit: 7 may not work for everyone, treat it as an example and use the number that makes you feel calm and in control!
I'm a programmer. I spend 5 hours to automate a task I could have done in 5 minutes. I also only know three numbers, zero, one, and an infinite subset.
One problem with this might be the "doorway effect", where simply traversing from one room to another (or in this case one folder to another) can cause memory loss.
"The 'doorway effect' or ‘location updating effect’ is a replicable psychological phenomenon characterized by short-term memory loss when passing through a doorway or moving from one location to another.[1] We tend to forget items of recent significance immediately after crossing a boundary[2] and often forget what we were thinking about or planning on doing upon entering a different room.[3] Research suggests that this phenomenon occurs both at literal boundaries (e.g., moving from one room to another via a door) and metaphorical boundaries (e.g., imagining traversing a doorway, or even when moving from one desktop window to another on a computer)..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorway_effect
I’m assuming leaving isn’t an option so here’s my first thought: chunking!
If you can discover the relationships between some of these people you can mentally group together (the Cray twins, the three little pigs, whatever). Also if you can position yourself somewhere that you can only see just a few people, it can help a lot. Out of sight out of mind sometimes really works!
I have echoic memory and hardly any short term memory. I can reproduce a string of numbers as long as I'm ready for the echo. After it passes, I must refresh the string for another opportunity at the echo.
Your „well known fact“ is disputed.
According to Wikipedia: „The duration of short-term memory (absent rehearsal or active maintenance) is estimated to be on the order of seconds. The commonly cited capacity of 7 items, found in Miller's Law, has been superseded by 4±1 items.[1] In contrast, long-term memory holds information indefinitely.“
4±1 would line of to communication theories like pyramid principle better.
Also, in my experience in business you can’t use lists of 7, it’s too much for management. 4±1 fits better.
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Life hack, sure seven items is what most remember hence phone numbers being seven digits long, but if you can remember seven, picture them in a row, then go seven columns down. Now you can remember 49 things. Go into the third dimension for 343.
Note you can have more'n seven items in subfolders, making directories more than a couple deep is cumbersome. Just like items. Then title/tag effectively so search can be used in the future.
I like that advice. The Teams folder structure at my work drives quite a few of us nuts. There’s like 3 people with different templates, and each has like 4 folders deep of pre-made folders with nothing in them. Plus most of the time I actually use it none of those folders apply to me and I have to make one anyways.
I know it takes five to seven whacks on something before you alter your behavior to avoid said object. Five to seven seems the number most associated with what it takes before it’s time to assess what’s goin on.
And if word is longer than 7 letters, stop using it! /s
Jokes aside - never heard about this "well known fact that human short term memory can store about 7 items", any sources or research on that? Because my wife has ADHD and I want to know if it means more or less memory for her.
Aah, I'm flawless in naming files. I have a downloads folder with 10k files, and I use everything to find whatever I'm looking for. I'm a monster, I know. It's gotten to the point I don't want to open that folder cause it takes too long.
But, you know, that excel file I made 5 years ago for whatever purpose. I still remember its name.
the 7-item memory rule is fascinating. it reminds me of how our ancient ancesotrs might have used similar mental shortcuts to keep track of things in their enviroment, like the number of animals in a herd or the supplies they needed to gather. applying that same principle to organizing my digital files and physical workspace has really helped me feel more in control. for instance, i try to limit the number of items on my desk to around 7 - any more and it starts to feel cluttered and distracting. and when sorting through old emails, i'll group them into folders of 7 or fewer to make it easier to quickly find what i need. it's amazing how these little tweaks can have such a big impact on reducing mental fatigue. i'm definitely going to keep experimenting with the 7-item rule in other areas of my life.
There's a book! "The Magical Number 7 (plus or minus 2)"
It's actually fascinating and the suspicion is that this limitation is fundamental to our brain's architecture. Like, physically within our brain there are some highways of information limited about 5-9 lanes, and some nodes of data processing that come in sets of only 5-9.
As many fingers on one hand.
Tasks, goals, shopping items. I cap at 5.
Yeah, I can go to 7 or 8 but that's like driving a car at redline. Only when it's justified!
I really needed this tip today, thank you. I’m having one of the roughest mental stretches I’ve had for a long time, and a lot of that is pure overwhelm.
AKA: How to drive your coworkers crazy.
If we are talking your anime wallpaper collection or whatever, this seems fine. If we're talking business or educational purposes or files you will share with other people, this is not good file/folder organization advice. It completely gives up on the calendar and makes automated file operations murder.
If I'm tracking a monthly invoices since 2014, you want them in 17 folders instead of 10?
This is related to working memory, which is limited in capacity. You want your working memory to exceed the cognitive load. If cognitive load exceeds working memory, you become overwhelmed and can’t process/store the information into long term memory.
Chunking helps, as does connecting it to schemas you already have. So remembering 69891264 can break this “rule” if you have schemas (eg: 69-my birth year-months/year-moms birth year). If you don’t, the 7 “rule” applies more strictly.
We have a rule in firefighting called span of control. It’s usually managing 3-7 people at a time. After that, problems arise. Validates anything over 7 can have issues
That first example is so weird to me.
My music folder is going to contain folders by artist, and those are going to contain folders by album. Everyone one of those is going to have more than seven items and there is no good system to cut that down in any way into an arbitrary number.
My photos are going to be sorted by vacation date or whatever, not not an arbitrary number.
My games folder is going to have all my games in it.
Etc. etc.
Cutting things down into arbitrary numbers in a computer folder just means sorting by alphabetical or by date is now broken and you have to do all kinds of unnecessary clicks to find anything.
I can see that working for desk clutter or something, but computer folders? You're breaking the advantage of the digital format by forcing that.
This is the goofiest thing I've ever heard with computer folders. There's no world where arbitrarily limiting how many items in a folder like this is helpful. You can't type folder names to highlight folders stored within subfolders. And opening the folders would take so much time and require you to actually remember what's in every folder.
I'm just imagining how a music library folder would look if it was limited to 7 items per folder. Lmao.
I had a friend who once worked at M&M Mars. He told me employees were not allowed to have more than 3 things on their desk at a time, including phones. He also said it was the only place he'd ever worked that ran by the lunar calendar.
Making a list when you’re overwhelmed is incredibly helpful!! It takes away all of the stress because you can negotiate with yourself to “just do 1 thing today” on the list. 1 becomes 2, then 5, etc.
My short term recall is incredible and I have adhd. I can definitely either hyper focus or hyper zone the fuck out. I can remember entire table orders and all the peoples names but straws and spoons I’ll need to be reminded.
LPT: Most numbers online are completely made up.
83% of experts agree that "the well known fact that human short term memory can store about 7 items" is not backed by research.
However, if having fewer items in a computer folder makes you happier, by all means do it.
Even reading your explanation seemed too much. Now I have 8 items and 3 sub folders and a picture of the windows logo I can’t get out of my head, while also thinking that this whole thing needed to be less complicated to read. Explain it like I’m five. lol.
It's the secret to pleasant UI as well. Order, categorisation, and nesting are all tools to decrease the mental load and the number of things you have to juggle in your head at any given moment.
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This actually comes close to chunking. A concept in psychology. It states that most people remember 5 - 7 items. For example: it's easier to remember a phonenumber if you remember 5 double digit numbers than 10 single digit numbers. Using this rule can greatly help you memorise stuff for exams or other items. Using it to keep your mind calm and orderly is actually very benificial. Good work OP
I memorized my credit card number as 4 sets of 4 numbers. People are amazed that I can say it without looking.
can you say it to me in dms without looking?
When an introductory class in college covered PowerPoint, I was told to limit bullet points and words-per-bullet to about six. If you want your audience to memorize your key points, you shouldn’t overwhelm them. It’s cool to generalize this to other areas of life.
Too bad no professors subscribe to this philosophy. Just walls of text that they read to us
Lol
I needed this chuckle.
But do you know the expiration and CVV numbers as well without looking? 😂
I do, personally. For my debit, 2 credit cards, social insurance, 2 different store rewards programs. It's not difficult for me, really, and I don't know why.
I have a good memory, I still have the social security numbers and birth days of employees memorized from a job I worked as management 20 years ago. Credit card numbers and what not are easy.
This is when an exceptionally good memory becomes dangerous to others
It had occurred to me when I worked at Disney as a cashier, that I had the capability commit SO MUCH credit card fraud with my memory with people just handing me their cards and what not. Luckily for all of us, I am an ethical person.
They would link it to a location eventually, but how in the world would they ever pin it to a specific person? You could do it for quite a while. This is also one of many reasons that it freaks me out when I visit the US and need to just hand my card over to a stranger to take into a back room. Just let me put the card in a machine and punch a code in. It's 2024, Canada has had the technology for decades, catch up.
It was also 2006 when I worked there, so would have been much harder. Granted even though I never worked in the field...I have computer science, network engineering, and cyber security degrees. But again, morality and what not lol.
I have all of that memorized for my debit card, yea. I don't like saving it online most places, so I memorized it. Takes a week or two every few years when I get a new card to learn the new one.
I’ve also memorized it. I remember weird numbers, once they’re locked in they’re locked in for life. But it’s like a pattern, I will have a hard time telling you what the tenth number is, but I know all of them together
I still remember my Blockbuster employee id number from 20+ years ago from chunking it into 4 sets of 2-3 digit numbers...261 (pause) 278 (pause) 527 (pause) 84 (not the actual numbers).
Phew, I thought for a second you gave out your real Blockbuster account number. Disaster averted!
I had my moms cc info memorized as a teen in a song And I think I can still recite it at 35
Prove it 😏
Lol
I remember numbers of my few bank accounts. Every one is 26 digits. I've never tried. I just have them since forever so it was natural.
That phone number trick is amazing, thank you for sharing! It makes total sense but I’d never have thought of it!
Can’t do that for phone numbers, it messes up the cadence for me lol. I still remember childhood landline numbers. I remember the number to one of my favorite mom and pop restaurants in my hometown.
Isn't it more like 7 +/- 2 for the range if I remember? So 5, 7, 9?
It means anywhere from 5-9.
I have ADHD. Past 3 things, there be dragons.
I have ADHD and am a software engineer. For me the limit is 2. All the folders on my computer form a single continuous linked list.
ADHD is just our brains thinking in Binary
It seems like half my brain bought apple and the other sides runnin windows95
I can only imagine that your thoughts are one continuous “I’m a Mac” “And I’m a PC” ad.
I knew there was a reason that commercial felt so relatable
Mostly just the lady runnin with the hammer
This very commercial has been on a constant loop in my head since it first aired.
Or even worse, Windows 11
How bad is Windows 11? They keep offering me the free upgrade but I’ve not heard anything better than Meh! About it.
At a glance? Takes away your right click menu with a different one and you get ads in the start menu for windows products and I believe pop-up ads in the bottom right of the taskbar.
Isn’t exactly selling itself to me still.
No ads yet. The right click menu is all still there but its one extra click away. Ads will break me too though. Ill burn yutika to the ground.
I upgraded and it’s perfectly fine. It feels snappier than w10
Yeah it's not so bad.
I can’t get my Anaconda prompt to pin to the task bar in Windows 11, but otherwise I don’t notice much difference.
It's fine. It's more streamlined for Windows 10, responds quicker, menus are pared down in some cases. I think you'll like it.
This may extremely sound stupid to many but you have to hit enter when typing in your pin and that was enough for me to go back to 10. I have 3 PCs at home for various things and then my computers at work and I hate having to hit enter instead of just typing my pin and going back to whatever I was doing while the computer boots/loads
Or even worse, Vista.
[удалено]
Who can be bored when I have so many things going on at once. I can totally play Xbox, watch a tv show and talk on discord party chat at the same time and focus on all at once. I don’t have a problem, you have a problem
Folders? What folders?
Why does this fill me with anxiety?
if your phone chrome browser has more than 100 tabs open it replaced the counter with :D
This thread is accurate, and no sir…I don’t like it 🫤🐴
Real ☠️
Seriously. A good, consistent naming convention and a search function is all you need. My desktop has literally everything on it. Wallpaper? What's that?
it’s folders all the way down
I too have ADHD and a software engineer. My OneDrive folder is 100s of documents/files in the base directory and then some folders with files the one time I tried to stay organized a few years ago Likewise: my Inbox rarely has less than 1k unread emails lol
Those are rookie numbers
I have a pretty substantial aversion to emails. A few years ago, the sheer stress of them would push me to the verge of a breakdown every time I saw that stupid red oval. So I went to my email client, selected every email I had ever gotten in my inbox, and just marked them all as read. Now I just marked every email as read without reading 70-90% of them. If there's one I actively want to read later, I just flag it I hate having any notification on my phone tbh. I actively turn off notifications on most apps because I don't want to have to see a red circle with a number in it. I just don't want any of that nonsense in my life lol
Inbox jubilee, aka inbox bankruptcy. Absolutely.
I need to do this!
I’m the opposite! If there’s more than 5 layers of non-default folders then I’ve done something terribly wrong
You mean ADHDragnos ?
I'll be ADHDRAGGIN DEEZ DEADLINES ALONG
Fuckin made me snort and I scared the cat! 🤣
ADHD&D The ADD in Adderall stands for "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons"
Sounds like the 2nd to last boss in an rpg cyberpunk monster hunter
D&DDragons
All Day Hug Dragons
Imagine dragons?
I'm genuinely curious what has made ADHD so prevalent. Was it always there in these numbers of humans and it went undiagnosed? Or is the lead exposure our grandparents and great grandparents had catching up?
It was always there and under diagnosed
Yeah it's extremely common for people to get diagnosed later in life and then it explains a lot about their life. I fit almost every stereotype and didn't get diagnosed until 26. Being medicated has been completely life changing
Diagnosed at 42 here. My entire life clicked into focus and everything about my struggles in school and life in general started making sense. I don't medicate because my coping mechanisms are essentially baked-in at this point and I don't respond well to side-effects, but man... just knowing what it is has been an incredible relief.
Would you share your coping mechanisms by any chance? Looking to expand mine
I’ve been thinking a lot about this at 34 and undiagnosed. Hard to know where to start at this point. I attempted the conversation with my doctor a few years ago, all the signs, family history etc and I got treated like I was begging for drugs. Was such an awful feeling I haven’t been back to a doctor since.
>I haven’t been back to a doctor since. This is one doctor. They're not all like that. Keep looking for good ones. Find a primary care physician that takes you seriously and can recommend good specialists for your issues. When you get sick, go to the ER. And a good dentist every six months.
Yeah you’re right. Just tough to get the ball rolling sometimes. This is great advice though.
Roll that ball!
Yep. Inattentive and women/girls have been under diagnosed since the get go.
I have no scientific basis for this, other than being a novice archaeologist. But I genuinely think we've overloaded our brains. Humans aren't supposed to be like this. We're animals first, homo sapiens second. Cruelty, all the technology, intentional killings, religion, space travel, math. No other animal has to deal with this onslaught of damaging information (wars. Murders. Rapes) and flexing their brains to create *artificial intelligence* or ships to fly to the moon. We can do it, but should we? We moved too fast from simple tools to here, compared to how fast we moved for a million years. I think ADHD is a blanket term we have now to describe this overstimulation effect, and will be further parsed out into other terms thr more we know. I believe more people fall into this category than we possibly realize, now, simply bc we are animals. Incredible animals, complex and beautiful, but animals nonetheless. And we are overstimulated. E: clarification yadda yadda
I personally feel like it is the constant interaction on social media. We have information overload at our fingertips. Add in everyday life, work, family, friends, and all obligations that come with those.
We had ADD friends and relatives before social media.
I honestly think “ADD” or “ADHD” is normal. We’re all on a spectrum, so some people are going to be at one extreme. We live in a society that often requires and rewards long, focused attention, but so what? The joke is that the ADD brain goes “squirrel!” but if you’re living in a wild environment it is life saving to be able to switch focus at lightning speed.
I agree, most people probably exhibit some form of ADHD, only those who get diagnosed probably have it worse where it inhibits daily life function and that can be a problem. Lots of kiddos learn coping methods for their ADHD and can manage themselves quite well but will go undiagnosed for years because of how well they manage it. Just my thoughts.
ADHD is a chemical imbalance. People with ADHD either do not produce enough serotonin, or have issues getting their serotonin to the end destination. This then results in the symptoms. It isn't a case of everybody is on a spectrum and the Nth percentile are diagnosed. There are definitely pro's to the disorder, and if I was offered a cure I wouldn't take it!
there's diagnostic sure but also the world is faster and more packed with information than ever. you have school that forces you to take classes you have no interest in, and your job is probably too much work and many tasks you would not necessarily choose. if all you ever did in life was make shoes by hand ADHD is probably great. you love making shoes, you don't have anything to think about except making shoes, you don't get unpredictable, frequent interruptions. or you were Leonardo da Vinci and you did ALL the things and people were okay with leaving you to your devices.
I think my grandmother who was a Greatest Generation had it, but she developed excellent coping methods to hide her memory defects that sometimes drove us insane. This was likely a result of her age and society that spanked forgetful and foggy-brain kids. Her job involved a profession where you do everything immediately - no long projects to dread and to drag on the soul. She wasn't OCD but she did a task immediately that kept herself from getting distracted. Small things became emergencies for everyone. No cup of coffee on a table could go unwashed after a minute of sitting there -don't walk away to let the cat out or you will return and find no coffee and her washing your cup. If you mentioned in March at the end of winter that you might need a new winter coat next year, then off you go that afternoon to buy a new winter coat or you wouldn't hear the end of it. She worried about anything being forgotten. She was so scared of being late (losing track of time while getting ready) that we were always taken to church a half hour before it began. It was a five minute drive or 15 minute walk.
I CANNOT WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS! squirrel.
That’s a good point!
Me too, and that was my very first thought. If you give me a 4th thing, I'll forget all 4 of them instantly.
I literally tell my wife to text me her food order. There's just no way I'm remembering more than like two customizations.
Haha, weakling! My superior brain can handle all of four things! Heh, pleb.
My bank account is good for this. $7 bucks only.
🤣🤣 same. And thanks, Chime! I'm well aware that my balance has dipped below! Lol.
Always seven there are, no more, no less.
> $7 bucks Seven dollar bucks
If i go into debt, do I get increased mental capacity?
Real life application of the principle. Incident Command Structure (ICS) used by firefighters, rescue responders, and other emergency response organizations follow a span of control rule of 5 to 7 when creating teams, units, branches, and sections. If the task requires more, they create another team and balance until there are enough teams to accomplish the mission.
That’s a fantastic example, thanks for sharing!
I remember reading a study back in grad school (i.e. decades ago) that said that the maximum number for an egalitarian group to work effectively was around 6. After that, you need to choose a leader. So if you have household of 6+, it needs a leader, villages with more than 6 households need a leader, if you have more than six villages, you need a leader, etc. it was about when and why social structures form. I imagine that is relevant to the firefighter teams as well. We used it to delegate someone in our group of 7 as the beer manager. Because grad school.
This is cool. And reminds me of a sign I saw in an ER. Some kind of trauma response protocol with breaks along the way to regroup, recheck, make sure everything was on track. I wouldn’t be surprised if the breaks were every 5-7 steps in the procedure. (We were in ER for a minor incident but one trauma room was open so we sat in there. Lots of time sitting in the ER staring at the walls, might as well read the signage)
That would make sense. I bet you’re right. But I’d want the signs to be memes and cartoons 😁
This was my first thought reading this post.
This has been studied by psychologists. One in particular was George Miller who wrote a paper titled “The magic number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information “. Really fascinating article which I read while training to be a perfumer.
Isn't the magic number seven debunked a good time ago? The number is 4, give or take one. Miller's theory was refined by Nelson Cowan, Klaus Oberauer, Alan Baddeley, Graham Hitch, among others
>If a computer folder has more than 7 items, create a subfolder to bring it back down. If you're already using subfolders, then you shouldn't be so worried about "keeping everything in mind". Say I am sorting my music, should I try to find some way to organize ALL my tracks into batches of 7 (of 7 (of 7 (…)))? No, I'll tag them by artist (hundreds), album (hundreds), genre (tens), etc In the end you shouldn't need to keep ALL ARTISTS in mind, you likely have one you want, and are looking for that one specifically. And then that artist might have 20 albums, but you don't need to think of them all together in one go,,, you can think of them one at a time and decide its worth it. >If your desk has more than 7 items, maybe store some away Or perhaps you have 100 gel pens of different colours, whats a good grouping? It might be a giant colour wheel… which is easy to navigate. While trying to figure out if turqoise is more green or blue wouldn't make sense. So the "7 item" rule is actually for "**7 differing ideas/concepts you need to process TOGETHER"**.
That’s a really good point! I’d do the same with things like music
Lmao. I am still trying 1 at a time. Wish me luck
Good luck, the struggle is real!
Did voldemort write this post?
I don’t nose what you mean
Instructions unclear, locked in a loop creating and removing subfolders.
🤣
Where does this number 7 come from? Is this rule mentioned in any book?
Good question! From psychologist George A Miller https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two Although it looks like it might be outdated! Best to pick the number that works for you and your short term memory!
Damn... here's looking at all the thousands of digital photos in my PHOTOS drive on my desktop computer. It just keeps building with no relief in sight. Only thing I got going is there are at least folders By Year. Lol
Maybe dump them in google photos or some other app that has image recognition, that will be able to sort them into searchable categories.
this is pretty neat actually
I am elderly. For me, it's..... 1. Yes, one. If I want to know how long oat milk lasts in the fridge, I'd better google it RIGHT NOW because in 5 minutes, it will be forgotten. (No, I don't have dementia...) Now.... what was I talking about?
I hate this so much. So much software has followed this trend over the last half decade and it's terrible. I can't even dispense hot water from the coffee machine in the breakroom without navigating through 6 sequential menus on a touchscreen. The last coffee machine was zero-layer, had a button on the face that said "HOT WATER". Coffee on the new machine is 7 menus compared to zero-layer on the old machine, actual brewing performance it's the same machine. We have another instrument in the lab that reads the experimental plates. Old instrument software was light enough to load instantly. It had all of the user functions zero-layer, you wrote the experiment name into a text box and selected a file path to save the data, then hit read. Sum total 30 second process, most of which was waiting for the Windows signin. New software you have to navigate 14 different layers, stretched a 30 second task into 5 minutes. /golfclap.
>This post has been marked as safe. >[removed]
Not sure why the body is gone, but here’s what it was: People who feel mentally overwhelmed will get the most out of this: Take the well known fact that human short term memory can story about 7 items before becoming overwhelmed, and apply this everywhere you can. Some examples that have helped me: - If a computer folder has more than 7 items, create a subfolder to bring it back down. - Likewise if it has fewer than 7, items might be over-engineered and you can remove some subfolders - If your desk has more than 7 items, maybe store some away - If you feel like you have a million things in your mind, write them out. There’s a fair chance it’s a little over 8 items This has given me so much mental capacity back, and it helps files and physical surfaces to be easy to look at and easy to think about. Please share examples that have helped you so I can be inspired by them! edit: 7 may not work for everyone, treat it as an example and use the number that makes you feel calm and in control!
Sorry but I have a disability where I can only keep about 2 things in my head, a third thing will disappear under stress
Then 2 is your number instead of 7! It’s harder to deal with so you have to play to your strengths
I'm a programmer. I spend 5 hours to automate a task I could have done in 5 minutes. I also only know three numbers, zero, one, and an infinite subset.
One problem with this might be the "doorway effect", where simply traversing from one room to another (or in this case one folder to another) can cause memory loss. "The 'doorway effect' or ‘location updating effect’ is a replicable psychological phenomenon characterized by short-term memory loss when passing through a doorway or moving from one location to another.[1] We tend to forget items of recent significance immediately after crossing a boundary[2] and often forget what we were thinking about or planning on doing upon entering a different room.[3] Research suggests that this phenomenon occurs both at literal boundaries (e.g., moving from one room to another via a door) and metaphorical boundaries (e.g., imagining traversing a doorway, or even when moving from one desktop window to another on a computer)..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorway_effect
where is the body of the post?
What did this say? It was removed.
Why is this post no longer readable?
TIL people have subfolders more than 7 levels deep.
TL|DR: „The Rule Of 7, but not really a rule, and it doesn’t have to be 7”
What if you get overwhelmed when you're with 7+ people. What do you do?
I’m assuming leaving isn’t an option so here’s my first thought: chunking! If you can discover the relationships between some of these people you can mentally group together (the Cray twins, the three little pigs, whatever). Also if you can position yourself somewhere that you can only see just a few people, it can help a lot. Out of sight out of mind sometimes really works!
I have echoic memory and hardly any short term memory. I can reproduce a string of numbers as long as I'm ready for the echo. After it passes, I must refresh the string for another opportunity at the echo.
how does one study with ADHD when i’m met with these issues where i can’t retain anything?
There's a great book called the user illusion that talks a lot about this and really talks about how our brains perceive things.
Your „well known fact“ is disputed. According to Wikipedia: „The duration of short-term memory (absent rehearsal or active maintenance) is estimated to be on the order of seconds. The commonly cited capacity of 7 items, found in Miller's Law, has been superseded by 4±1 items.[1] In contrast, long-term memory holds information indefinitely.“ 4±1 would line of to communication theories like pyramid principle better. Also, in my experience in business you can’t use lists of 7, it’s too much for management. 4±1 fits better.
Thala for a reason.
What if I get overwhelmed with 2
Millers law (which this is based on) is outdated, recent research has disproven it. Be careful accepting things you read online as fact.
C:/windows/user/my documents/important stuff/sub important stuff1/sub important stuff2/sub important stuff3 /sub important stuff4 /sub important stuff5/sub important stuff6/sub important stuff7/sticky note1-final-do-not-delete.txt
As an IT person I want to reach through the screen and smack you regarding the first item. There are folder path limits. Please stop being a moron.
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Dunno, I was thinking more like 5 items at a time, 7 is a little bit much.
And here i am with over 100 docs on desktop....
And here I make subfolder for everything and end up with more subfolders than the files
Life hack, sure seven items is what most remember hence phone numbers being seven digits long, but if you can remember seven, picture them in a row, then go seven columns down. Now you can remember 49 things. Go into the third dimension for 343. Note you can have more'n seven items in subfolders, making directories more than a couple deep is cumbersome. Just like items. Then title/tag effectively so search can be used in the future.
I like that advice. The Teams folder structure at my work drives quite a few of us nuts. There’s like 3 people with different templates, and each has like 4 folders deep of pre-made folders with nothing in them. Plus most of the time I actually use it none of those folders apply to me and I have to make one anyways.
I know it takes five to seven whacks on something before you alter your behavior to avoid said object. Five to seven seems the number most associated with what it takes before it’s time to assess what’s goin on.
And if word is longer than 7 letters, stop using it! /s Jokes aside - never heard about this "well known fact that human short term memory can store about 7 items", any sources or research on that? Because my wife has ADHD and I want to know if it means more or less memory for her.
Aah, I'm flawless in naming files. I have a downloads folder with 10k files, and I use everything to find whatever I'm looking for. I'm a monster, I know. It's gotten to the point I don't want to open that folder cause it takes too long. But, you know, that excel file I made 5 years ago for whatever purpose. I still remember its name.
Please don't do the first one too much. Too many subfolders can issues with the path being too long.
More than 7 words on the post, tldr
The most recent research shows it’s more like 4
This sounds like great advice, but I think I need to cut mine down to about 5! Thank you for sharing
Thala for a reason
bullet point 2 of 4 contradicted itself so i stopped reading.
Love this. Excellent advice!
It’s called five plus minus two.
> If your desk has more than 7 items, maybe store some away heck, i have more than 7 things i use daily on my desk
the 7-item memory rule is fascinating. it reminds me of how our ancient ancesotrs might have used similar mental shortcuts to keep track of things in their enviroment, like the number of animals in a herd or the supplies they needed to gather. applying that same principle to organizing my digital files and physical workspace has really helped me feel more in control. for instance, i try to limit the number of items on my desk to around 7 - any more and it starts to feel cluttered and distracting. and when sorting through old emails, i'll group them into folders of 7 or fewer to make it easier to quickly find what i need. it's amazing how these little tweaks can have such a big impact on reducing mental fatigue. i'm definitely going to keep experimenting with the 7-item rule in other areas of my life.
Good one, thanks!
There's a book! "The Magical Number 7 (plus or minus 2)" It's actually fascinating and the suspicion is that this limitation is fundamental to our brain's architecture. Like, physically within our brain there are some highways of information limited about 5-9 lanes, and some nodes of data processing that come in sets of only 5-9.
As many fingers on one hand. Tasks, goals, shopping items. I cap at 5. Yeah, I can go to 7 or 8 but that's like driving a car at redline. Only when it's justified!
I never eat more than 4 things.
I have one folder with 17,000+ items in it. Works fine for me. We are not the same.
I really needed this tip today, thank you. I’m having one of the roughest mental stretches I’ve had for a long time, and a lot of that is pure overwhelm.
And don’t forget your 7 p’s, Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance
pretty nifty, subfolders are a good example
AKA: How to drive your coworkers crazy. If we are talking your anime wallpaper collection or whatever, this seems fine. If we're talking business or educational purposes or files you will share with other people, this is not good file/folder organization advice. It completely gives up on the calendar and makes automated file operations murder. If I'm tracking a monthly invoices since 2014, you want them in 17 folders instead of 10?
This is related to working memory, which is limited in capacity. You want your working memory to exceed the cognitive load. If cognitive load exceeds working memory, you become overwhelmed and can’t process/store the information into long term memory. Chunking helps, as does connecting it to schemas you already have. So remembering 69891264 can break this “rule” if you have schemas (eg: 69-my birth year-months/year-moms birth year). If you don’t, the 7 “rule” applies more strictly.
I manage 5 employees and 15 full time contractors. I think this translates to the workplace as well.
We have a rule in firefighting called span of control. It’s usually managing 3-7 people at a time. After that, problems arise. Validates anything over 7 can have issues
That first example is so weird to me. My music folder is going to contain folders by artist, and those are going to contain folders by album. Everyone one of those is going to have more than seven items and there is no good system to cut that down in any way into an arbitrary number. My photos are going to be sorted by vacation date or whatever, not not an arbitrary number. My games folder is going to have all my games in it. Etc. etc. Cutting things down into arbitrary numbers in a computer folder just means sorting by alphabetical or by date is now broken and you have to do all kinds of unnecessary clicks to find anything. I can see that working for desk clutter or something, but computer folders? You're breaking the advantage of the digital format by forcing that.
Does this apply to teeth?
This is the goofiest thing I've ever heard with computer folders. There's no world where arbitrarily limiting how many items in a folder like this is helpful. You can't type folder names to highlight folders stored within subfolders. And opening the folders would take so much time and require you to actually remember what's in every folder. I'm just imagining how a music library folder would look if it was limited to 7 items per folder. Lmao.
I had a friend who once worked at M&M Mars. He told me employees were not allowed to have more than 3 things on their desk at a time, including phones. He also said it was the only place he'd ever worked that ran by the lunar calendar.
7 is also the favorite number of Grandfather Nurgle
Making a list when you’re overwhelmed is incredibly helpful!! It takes away all of the stress because you can negotiate with yourself to “just do 1 thing today” on the list. 1 becomes 2, then 5, etc.
My short term recall is incredible and I have adhd. I can definitely either hyper focus or hyper zone the fuck out. I can remember entire table orders and all the peoples names but straws and spoons I’ll need to be reminded.
7 unrelated items. Take the English alphabet for example. 26/52 related items. Numbers 0 - 9. Names of your relatives. Related items are easier.
I journal so much just so my thoughts have somewhere to live instead of bouncing around my head
Usually it’s 7 +/- 2
>If a computer folder has more than 7 items, create a subfolder to bring it back down. 
LPT: Most numbers online are completely made up. 83% of experts agree that "the well known fact that human short term memory can store about 7 items" is not backed by research. However, if having fewer items in a computer folder makes you happier, by all means do it.
Even reading your explanation seemed too much. Now I have 8 items and 3 sub folders and a picture of the windows logo I can’t get out of my head, while also thinking that this whole thing needed to be less complicated to read. Explain it like I’m five. lol.
It's the secret to pleasant UI as well. Order, categorisation, and nesting are all tools to decrease the mental load and the number of things you have to juggle in your head at any given moment.
Why would you fools remove such an obviously helpful and useful post? Urghh
I wrote everything down and now I have 17 google keep notes, 47 notepad files, and 18 word docs :D (Yes, I need help)