I’m curious if anyone with ADHD has found themselves in the position of weighing up digital tools vs paper.
When I found Obsidian I was very hopeful I could leverage it in a way that would support my weaknesses due to ADHD, and the lack of diligence when dealing with non-stimulating tasks that can come with it.
By now I’ve been experimenting with Obsidian and Roam for over a year, but I find that they almost offer even more distraction for my ADHD brain. Any time I’m trying to get down to work, there’s always that hyper-active little monkey in my head that wonders, “maybe if I just tweak my workflow like this”, “how about that plugin”, “what’s happening on the forum/discord”, “maybe I should be mapping this out in Excalidraw, better watch a video of Zsolt”, “what about breadcrumbs” and on and on. And of course, being an a computer at all, the great time sink that is the browser is just a shortcut way, always looming in the wings of an ADHD mind.
A few times recently I’ve just printed out a paper I’m studying, taken some blank A4 and a stack of notecards and gone somewhere to work without any devices. It’s bliss to be honest. I’m focused, sharp, insightful, remember the material well etc.
I’m getting seriously tempted to ditch the digital tools for study, learning, knowledge management, and just use them for producing final written pieces. That would be giving up many of the great benefits of digital tools though, as well as giving me a huge amount of paper to manage in the long run, so I’m hesitant.
So basically I’m just wondering if anyone has gone through a similar process and has any experience to share. Has anyone with ADHD tested working in an analogue way vs Obsidian? Anyone been through similar issues trying to use these tools but managed to get themselves focused and disciplined, and move beyond spending as much time thinking about and tweaking the tool as actually working?