15: the adhd episode

Even if you're not professional, you will love every day you will think about this. So it's a very, very wise game, a single. It's very good for mental health. Very good. Very good. Yeah. One, one. Are you obsessed with chess, but also kind of fun at parties? Do you keep your opening crap on your bedside table, right next to your field and journal? Welcome to the chess field's podcast. The only chess podcast dedicated to the social and psychological aspects of this game we know and love. And hey, tune in every week to join me, professional chess teacher and amateur feelings Harvard JJ Lang. And me, professional therapists and amateur checkmate binder Julia Rios. As we dive into our shares love for the game, he had the time to answer the most burning question for every chess obsessive. Why are we like this? One, one, two, three, three, yeah. So we're talking about this after round nine. NEPO has a two game lead and Nakamura have lost today too. So it's really just a two game lead over FABI and that's it. Barring a spectacular collapse. It's going to be a NEPO rematch. And so the question everyone's mind is, will Magnus play the match? Yeah, and we haven't chatted much about candidates on our podcast. Because it's boring. Yeah, I mean, I feel like the games themselves are exciting right? Everyone thought the FABI HIKARU game was one of the most exciting games that we've seen, maybe even in recent, you know, chess history. I was busy. I went out to lunch. Yeah, went up to lunch. I know that's kind of been the attitude. I expected to be as wrapped up in the candidates, maybe even more so than the world championship because there's so many different games and there's so many things that you can watch. And I thought it would be more dynamic. I was expecting to be super sucked in. But the thing that I said, which JJ wants on the record, that I think I would actually be more interested in watching a Carlson NEPO repeat than a Carlson FABI repeat. Which makes no sense to me. Can I defend my position? And this is why you can't, but I would like to watch you try. I actually think it would be more exciting. I think that FABI had some good matches and really kind of held his own and it was maybe more dynamic and watch NEPO. I mean, maybe it's kind of hard to say he crumbled, but it did sort of seem like after that first loss, it was really hard for him to bounce back. Right. And he didn't actually get to almost show how strong he can play, which we're seeing now in the candidates again, which we saw the first time. The kind of surprised everybody. So I feel like Neville just has more to prove. I don't know. I feel like it'll go spectacularly in one of either directions, either he'll like crumble right away and find, watch Magnus Stomp on him. But I feel like there might just be something untapped in NEPO. Okay. I want to believe. I want to believe. I think my resistance is more to wanting to have believed that the first time. I know. No one thought he had a chance. And then. I do think that there are some interesting choices like playing predominantly E5 as black. What she's doing in this candidate's too, that just didn't seem like a good fit for Magnus. So it would be interesting to see how he would prepare differently for that. But who can prepare for Magnus? You have to be able to play stock fish. Like at the end of the day, Magnus isn't going to blunder. Magnus is going to play with almost computer like precision. And you just have to have so much stamina. Right. And you don't think NEPO has it. And so this is why I think NEPO is a uniquely bad fit for Magnus. I think that a lot of NEPO's wins have come from the sort of slightly speculative, but intuitive, imbalanced play like the pawns acrogens, Deing, the material, the nuances. Those are the kinds of strengths that a) Magnus's team is too good to let him play for. And b) Magnus is too resilient and resourceful to really allow to get there. So I feel like the way that NEPO is beating everyone is NEPO at peak NEPO, which is just not going to be the biggest threat to Magnus. I agree. I'm just not convinced that Bobby will be more exciting to watch. Yeah. I feel like the Bobby match might not be that exciting of a match unless he grants it out. Of the three of them, I would rather see Hikaru of all of them, which I'm shocked to hear myself saying because there was a time like a year ago where I would have been like, oh, fuck no, like anyone not knocked up, but actually I would like to see it now. Okay. So the two major pros to a knock on the match are the engagement would be off the chart. So it would be good for chess. Off the charts. And we would have to not watch every day of the days where he's black because he would just play the Berlin draw. And so there would be like half the time you have to pay attention. I know. I wonder if actually Hikaru would be kind of a little bit of a deflating letdown. Because it would be more dross than we expect. Like they would both play it relatively safe and we would end up with a draw. But then what if they go into blitz? Right. I mean, who's better at most than Hikaru? That's the narrative is that the rapid blitz high breaks wouldn't favor Magnus for the first time ever. So yeah, I know. Okay. We're back where we started. I think Hikaru would be the one. But I think he's out of the running obviously. Well, bum me out about the Hikaru loss today was that in a world where it was NEPO and Hikaru too and Magnus declines match with NEPO. Then NEPO plays world title match with Hikaru. Hikaru wins Magnus reenters candidates. Then Magnus Hikaru next time that seems to be like the most interesting trajectory. I totally agree with that. Even NEPO FABI doesn't really excite me if I'm being honest. I think NEPO FABI would be interesting because they have such different styles. And as good as Kerala is, he's not like as precise as Magnus. Yeah, he's just not unbeatable. And I think maybe I don't know about exciting. I think that the match itself would be very satisfying to watch. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I hear what you're saying though. Watching him beat NEPO last year was actually, it was like hard to watch. Yeah. So I guess it will most likely feel that way again. But just the thought that maybe since NEPO has that reason experience, he comes back in with some new insight. Yeah. Maybe I'm just grasping it, Strauss. Well, maybe, well, okay, NEPO wins. Magnus Bales. Magnus plays a unification match with Karyakans Federation. Yeah. That's big dreaming, J.J. It's something. And then Mr. Dodgy is World Champion. But you've beaten Mr. Dodgy, which makes you World Champion. Yes. Okay. Cool. We got there. Okay. We'll see what happens. Yeah. I know. I haven't been as sucked into the candidates as I wanted to be or thought I would be, but I think that also might be for personal reasons. Yeah. And maybe that's a good segue for us to talk about what makes this, what makes this such a special episode, J.J. I feel like you say that every episode. Yeah. I say that. I mean, I'm not sure if that's the case. I'm not sure if that's the case. golden Karen. Okay. Yeah. I was going to say like doing like stuff on like chest relationships would be great. So then find golden Karen would be excellent for that. Um, who else do I want as guests? You know, I gosh reached out and said that he wants to come on and do test therapy. I'm really open to that. Oh yeah. We're gonna have you. Especially he's impossible. So that'll be a good test for like, I'm gonna have a therapist you really are. We're gonna dive it. I'm not gonna go easy on you. He's gonna break you. I let's see. I've never been broken before. Could I break Akash? Very possible. Um, that's so that's a good one. Oh, um, how about Jessica Louser US blind champion? Yeah, that would be amazing. That's on the wish list. I think we could set up a Ouija board and get. Oh, okay. Right. They don't notice he's not gonna come on the podcast. I know that, but let my heart think it's possible. But we will put Naradisky on the wish list. Um, who else is there anyone else we like? Oh, that we like. Yeah. One of the podcast. We like Michael and Amelia. You talk such a big game. Oh, Jen, Shaddy. Yes, Jen, Shaddy. I would love that. She'll have to be on there. Okay. This is a great lineup. So these are good. We need some shittier players though. I feel like my only complaint with this wish list is that these people are too good. I said, Michael and Amelia. You're right. I guess like they're now under the US amateur team, 2200 average just with a two in that one there. And unlike cool Julia Rios, they actually have played a few games of chess. So we can put them on that list. I'm not sure if they know as many of the rules of chess is Julia, cool Julia Rios did though, which makes it even more fascinating. Yeah. Well, they do both know the Benoni. They know of the Benoni. They know of the body. I have no. Okay, but cool Julia Rios also does not know how to play the Benoni. Yeah, they do. They do. I was just about to say that. Maybe lots of prizes. They knew a lot of things. I wasn't. Oh, that's how cool Julia Rios back on the wish list, too. Oh, definitely. Okay. I love that. Okay. Cool. I think we're meant for that. So you can start your harassment campaign to get these people on the podcast now. Yes, definitely. And there's just like also a lot of shit we haven't known done yet. Well, then you're very, very long list. I feel like recently, Julia, you said something to me, which is I love complaining about things. And I laughed because you're so good at it. It's such an art. You have to bring in the spirit of almost joy and delight. Yes. I'm complaining, but I'm actually having a really good time. And then it feels really pleasant. You do that remarkably well. Yeah. No, yeah. No comment. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. JJ also likes to deflect compliments. So this was a big moment for them. No, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna spoil any of it. But yeah, there's just a lot of people in places and books out there who think that they're safe because they've made it unscathed through the first season of the podcast. And they're not safe. We're coming for you. You know who you are. We also love you. If we're complaining about you, we secretly love you. That's part of that's part of the stick. Okay. So those are some things we have coming up. I think next season we've talked about wanting to talk more about some of the psychological things that we didn't dive as deeply into this season, thinking about things like neurodivergence, neuro atypicality. So basically today then we're gonna dip our toes into that water a little bit, right? JJ? We are going to get so dipped. We did want to talk about some of the neurodivergence stuff because we've gotten a lot of messages from people who are interested in that topic. Yeah. And something that I've seen in like DMs is requests to kind of talk about neuro atypicality in the sense of like people who are living with ADHD, folks who are on the spectrum, various other things, and how that can affect your chest or the way you think about chest. And I think those are super interesting conversations that have because there's an assumption that most brains pretty much work the same way. This is kind of funny to me. Like the one distinction that chest players are happy to make is the child brain and the adult brain are different. But beyond that, there's an adult brain and you can just learn with your adult brain. And so neuro atypicality is saying, okay, what if your adult brain isn't going to do that the way that certain people are assuming is? Yeah, definitely. So there's a lot of different kind of pieces of, you know, a type of quality that fit under that umbrella. And JJ, you mentioned a lot of the big ones. We think about different learning disorders, ADHD, which is an intentional disorder. There's other things that fall into that category as well. Autism, spectrum disorders, things like dyslexia, Tourette, synesthesia, things like dyspraxia. But I think something that's also important to highlight is even sort of outside of those categorical classifications or diagnoses. There's such a broad spectrum of the way people learn things and how they undergo their own cognitive processing. So I think there is a lot of neurodiversity, even for people who might not actually relate to some of those categorical identifiers. Yeah, damn, that's well put because I mean, I think this distinction between neuroatopicality as you described it as where we think of a lot of these disorders or learning disorders. And then neurodiversity as just a way of saying that like this assumption that there's like a perspective is is itself kind of alienating and talking about both of those things is great. And you can even think about the way some people will say, oh, I'm a visual learner. I'm an auditory learner. I'm a kinesthetic learner. We all have these ways that we really gravitate and we sort of recognize this is a method that I use that actually helps me retain information or learn something more broadly, more deeply. So we all know that we have kind of these individual characteristics. So something that's nice just kind of have the language to really figure out which of those characteristics or traits or categories you kind of more align with. So talking about a certain kind of approach to learning thinking processing that is near and dear to both of our hearts is. Yeah, I wonder what the people would guess. Oh, yeah. What what what mental health characteristic to JJ and I deeply and very obviously share. Is it a we are both synesthetic? Is it b we both have ADHD? Is it c? Oh, rapore I think is just a draw. Oh really? I was making a joke. You're just getting distracted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know if anyone else gets the joke. Okay, we both have ADHD. We both have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Okay, what does that mean? Yeah, that's actually a really good question. And a lot of people will sometimes say, oh, I have ADD, which doesn't really exist in the DSM five classification of psychiatric disorders anymore. So everything falls under the umbrella of ADHD now, but there are subtypes. So you can have a attentive subtype, which means you're really only experiencing the intention symptom. You can have a hyperactive subtype, or you can have a combined subtype. And that is the most common to experience are both of those symptoms. It's actually pretty rare that you only have one or the other. Okay, so can I ask so the two things you said they're in attention and hyperactive? Yes. Okay, so I think hyperactive is the one that is super interesting because I know that a lot of people have this idea of like the probably male gendered child bouncing off the walls as the idea of hyperactivity. And I know that like recently, there's been a lot of discussion about how that's not really a fair classification of hyperactivity. But it looked just like what is hyperactivity and what is an attention? Yeah, definitely. So hyperactivity can look like that, having a lot of energy, but there are a lot of symptoms that fall under that category. So people with ADHD that are the hyperactive or the combined subtype might experience things just like restlessness, fidgeting, impulsivity, behavioral control. It's really just more of the behavioral expression of ADHD. Whereas with intention, we're thinking about more of the internal or internalizing symptoms. So that's going to be difficulty focusing, difficulty concentrating, difficulty staying on task. So most people with ADHD will experience both cognitive and the behavioral symptoms. So as an example of this that's deeply personal. So if somebody is trying to have a conversation with me and I find myself both like tapping out a beat or rhythm on my leg and thinking about a chest game. Yeah. Yeah. So the tapping out would be a hyperactivity and the thinking about the chest game is the intention. Or even J.J. when we're zooming, I feel like sometimes you'll just stand up and like walk a lap in your house and then just sit back down and you're not going anywhere doing anything. Yeah. No, it's definitely, it's definitely true. Like I'm a pacer. My least favorite thing about Zoom is that I love just like doing laps while I'm on the phone. So funny because so do I. And I never knew that that was a trait of ADHD. And like when I started dating my partner, he was like, I've noticed you can't sit and talk on the phone. Or I walk around my house when I brush my teeth. And my partner thought this was like a thing. I don't know how much people want to know about this either. But one thing that I always think is really important to point out is that like I mentioned, the combined subtype is the most common. But that looks a little bit different in boys and girls or men and women. So with females, we see more of the inattentive subtype than the hyperactive subtype. And that's why this is so often misdiagnosed in girls, especially at grade school age groups, because we're not seeing those behavioral symptoms like the acting out, which really kind of prompt sometimes parents and teachers to say, oh, I think there's a problem. So I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was almost an adult because I wasn't disrupting classes or wasn't getting good grades. But every teacher I ever had said, Julia's head is in the clouds. She's not paying attention. She's reading during class. She clearly not focused on the lessons. And my parents were sort of like, okay, is she falling behind? And eventually when the answer was just no, they kind of let me be and realize like I really just couldn't do it. But that became a big problem after I graduated. and I was in the real world working a job where it's very important that even if you're getting the information, you also look like you're attending. So I got a lot of negative feedback at the first job I ever worked. Like it seems like you're not paying attention. And I was like, are people paying attention? Like I literally thought it wasn't possible. I was like no one at this meeting is paying attention and quickly realized like every single person in this room is paying attention. So that was a really odd feeling actually. And I think that maybe the canonical chest example of this is the staring at the ceiling. But I've totally had the experience of play. There's this, there's this kid who is a really strong like player and high school. It's only important to say that his name was Kevin because it was a Kevin Wong. But like I remember he'd never really looked at the board or looked like he was paying attention. And I just remember this because the guy who ran some local tournaments would post pictures of the games. And when there's pictures of Kevin just looking off into the distance, he would always write Kevin quote, "spacy, why?" Oh man, that joke doesn't age well this way. It didn't age well. But yeah, Kevin if you're out there if you're still playing, I'm really sorry about that swindle in 2006. I'm not sorry. No, you've never been sorry for a swindle today, don't lie. Yeah, but I don't know if to say he was paying attention or not. But he was clearly processing as well as or better than anyone else in that room. And I've definitely seen this especially in kids a lot where like there's certain people and like they look like they're paying attention and there's certain people and they don't. There's certain people who never get up from the board. There's certain people who are never out the board. And you see a lot of this and over time you start to realize like holy crap, none of this tracks who's actually focusing as well as you would think it does. And that's the super interesting thing. Totally. And I think it took my partner a long time to realize that too. We would be at a family event or we would be somewhere in public and we would talk about something later and I would bring up something somebody said or I would add my own thoughts and he would say, I have no idea how you know that. I literally thought that you were off in space. I didn't even realize you were listening. And I was like, honestly, that is when I'm able to attend. Like I just need a little bit more stimulation. So if it looks like I'm doing something else, that's when I'm able to absorb the information. When I look like I'm attending, what I'm doing essentially is creating that stimulation internally. So it looks like I'm being intentioned and now I'm not absorbing anything. I am in Julia world. I am thinking about E3. And what's funny there is I think that there's like more and less socially accepted ways to do that or ways that are even presented as like, oh no one thinks that you like have your head in the clouds or even that you're like, have some sort of neurodiversity if you're doing it. Like I remember at conferences, I would always and for philosophy, I would see several people like knitting with a suggestion being that doing something up your hands can help you attend. For me, I often take completely unintelligible notes during talks that I never really look at because the act of trying to rate something down helps me really focus on like processing the sounds I'm hearing well enough to at least think about them, but just the act of writing it down is going to make me remember it way better whether or not I look at the notes. I do the same thing or I doodle. I just need to be doing a little something. Yeah, but what's so funny is that one of those, if you're taking notes, you look like you're a really serious listener and no one's even going to probably accuse you of accuse of not paying attention, right? I think accused is the right word. I think there actually is a lot of social stigma and one thing I've kind of learned is that people with ADHD tend to carve out a life for themselves that fits those symptoms and they do this kind of naturally. They self-select for careers where you can have more of that independence or flexibility where you don't need to be sitting in meetings looking like you're attending for hours every day. So I think people will do that naturally, but I think when you're not doing that naturally, it can be really hard to fit into these specific social structures where we so value sitting still being quiet and looking like you're attending. That's literally what school looks like between the ages of five and 18. Yeah, absolutely. And I was just thinking of the difference between like taking notes versus doodling as an example of learning how to kind of dodge the criticism versus even though for me whether I'm doodling or taking notes, I'm doing the exact same thing which is doing something that helps the processing and I've just learned that when I do one of them, people think I'm not paying attention and when I do one of them, people think I'm really studious. Totally. I know and maybe you can hear it in my voice, but I definitely have sort of a vendetta about this. How much of the way we think about treating these neurodivergent disorders, treat these problems that need to be fixed. Yeah, and why why? Right. The way that we really actually conceptualize them is it's actually just a mismatch with the way that brain is functioning in the very specific capitalistic work oriented society that we live in. There are so many advantages and incredible things about a neurodivergent brain and the way they work and that type of intelligence and it's so broad and different and rich. So in the work that I do at least, I'm very clear, these are not symptoms that we're trying to erase or fix. They're not even symptoms. They're not side effects. Your brain is incredible. People with ADHD typically do cognitive processing up to four times faster than people without ADHD. That's incredible. That is a superpower. So that's something I feel really strongly about. And then that combined with just the general approach to, I don't know if I want to call it over medication, but I think what I do want to say is that at least America where we both live and are from, well, I'm from Nebraska, but it's often expensive and difficult and logistically very frustrating to find a therapist and it is slightly less expensive and logistically difficult to get hooked up with the psychiatrist who will prescribe you something. You don't need a psychiatrist to be prescribed something. You can go to your GP, you can go to a PCP. Anyone can prescribe you PCP? No, but they can prescribe you a stimulant. Anyone can prescribe these medications without any specialty. They can prescribe you Adraal. They can prescribe you vivans for a long time. There wasn't a lot of very serious regulations on these medications. Doctors were getting financial kickbacks, we did see an over prescription of these drugs. That's all a fact. And the way we treat ADHD is so inarguably heavily influenced by capitalism, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States is no joke, they're making money. So the way we see ADHD treated in other countries where we don't quite have this free market of drugs that are actually being marketed and advertised on cable television, very different. We see way more of the psychotherapeutic approaches and way less of the pharmaceutical approaches, which is not to demonize the medications at all. They're actually very, very useful when being used as needed and as prescribed. But it's very important that that is done correctly. And we also know that that works best synergistically with the behavioral and therapeutic treatments, especially in children. And most people aren't getting that. And I wanted to bring up that the connection between diagnosis and medication, because for me, I was diagnosed as an adult, at least hypothesized by pretty much every therapist that I saw. But I was always resistant. Well, I have a lot of resistance to medication in general, and I think that might be a separate conversation. But I was resistant to ADHD medication, because it felt like when I was pretty unhappy and miserable with the amount of work I would have to do to succeed in grad school, it felt like, yeah, if I took a stimulant every day, I could probably grind out all of this grunt work that is making me really, putting me in pain and miserable. But I kind of just really resist the idea that like, well, maybe I'd rather find something else I could do with my life that doesn't require this than just like take a magic drug. Because in part, not only did it feel kind of sad to me, but it also felt like I was implicit, complicit rather in this system, where yeah, if you want to succeed, you have to do this amount of work. And if your brain isn't wired to where this is just actually easy to you, it's putting on hold the question of whether, I mean, it's not easy for anyone to work that hard, but like for some people, they just do it, and they don't seem to have a lot of internal strife. Whereas for me, I would find it incredibly difficult to like get off the couch and start, and I could tell there is more going on. I was like, but you know, maybe it's like, okay, that this is just really hard for me, and I can do things where it isn't rather than kind of buy into this system where there's something, quote, unquote, wrong with my brain if it can't do this. And so what ended up switching for me was like when I was actually teaching chest full time, and then I was starting to see a lot of the same behavioral symptoms. I would think of multiple tasks that I wanted to accomplish and feel completely paralyzed and be like, okay, no, this is getting in the way of the stuff I actually want to be doing, and that I take genuine value and doing, I'm way more open to taking a pill that makes it possible for me to do what I want to do versus like doing this just so I can perform the way that society says I should be performing. Yeah, I'm so glad that you shared that, JJ, I think a lot of people have really similar reactions actually to medication. I work with a lot of clients who express some of that same hesitation or resistance for that reason among others. I mean, that was very well articulated. But I think people do have a similar feeling of I don't want to feel different. I don't want to change the way my brain is functioning. I want to set up a life that I can live where I can kind of be myself. And when that life you want to live, then it's kind of coming into conflict with some of the ways that you're processing information and you do find it helpful, I'm glad that you were able to make that shift and say, okay, it does fit in now and have that flexibility. - Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people are gonna wanna know kind of transitioning into just a little bit more. I think a lot of people are gonna wanna know well, how it has going on medication or even just being diagnosed, how has that changed my chest? And I think this is one difference for us because you had been diagnosed for longer than you've been playing chest. And I had been playing chest for a long time without being diagnosed. - I think that's one, I think, difference. So I'm kind of curious whether you've kind of ever related to yourself as someone who has ADHD as like affecting the way that you play chest or think about chest or learning chest. Okay, yeah, I wanna hear more about that. - Undoubtedly, yeah. So my presentation of ADHD is very inattentive. I have a lot more of the cognitive symptoms. I'm actually not a very restless, a very busy person. So I kind of fit into that more atypical subtype. One of the main symptoms of my ADHD throughout my entire life has really been hyperfocus. So again, these are the things that don't sound like ADHD and why it gets missed so much. We think of this as an inattention disorder. It's not an inattention disorder. It's an attentional disorder. So there's not a scarcity of attention. This is not someone who can't pay attention or lacks attention or resources. It's really about difficulty directing attention to things that that individual does not find stimulating. So the quote unquote impairment there isn't like the overall amount of attention. It's being able to focus the attention where you might want it to go. And we can think about this. The classic example is the young kid with ADHD who plays video games for six hours a day. So when something is stimulating, they can pay attention. It's not a lack of attentional resources. So I really have that hyperfocus. I've always had very intense hyper interests my whole life. So when I discovered chess and it scratched that itch, my brain found it very stimulating. I mean, I loved it right away and my heart nerve was literally like, oh shit. Look, I know where this is going. I've seen this before. And I'm not really someone who kind of start to hobby and then discards it very quickly. My interests are small, but they're like near and dear. Like long. So as soon as I discovered chess, I mean, I could study chess and play chess and watch chess videos and think about chess for hours and hours a day. And not only not have that attention break, but it's only was to interrupt that attention. I react in a way that's like not the friendliest. Like my partner was asking me a question and I'm like, what do you want? And he's like, oh, I'm like the love of your life. Like I just want to talk to you. I just forget the world around me. I am nicer than that, but Emilia would be jumping in here to say that what I do is if I'm hyper focused on something. Even if we're like sitting next to each other, have been sitting next to each other. If we were just doing our own things and I got sucked into something and then she just speaks, I will like let out an involuntary like Yelp. I'm just like, she did me too. That kind of startle response is very characteristic of ADHD because I'm not attending to the world around me. And she's like, I've been here the whole time. And I'm like, I have it. I know I used to accuse Michael, but you're such a spooky little ninja. He'd be like, actually, I walk around the house like a normal person. You just don't see the world around you and it's true. And it's kind of embarrassing. I'm really bad at directions. But in terms of how it's impacted my relationship with chess, I see those things as very integrated the way I fell in love with chess and the way my brain responds to chess. I do think is very characteristic of my neural presentation. What about you, JJ? Yeah, just to follow up on one thing. I think that's why at first I was really confused about why Emilia found it so annoying when I would play chess when we were just sitting on the couch and I was playing on my phone. I mean, I understood that it was annoying when I would be getting sucked into a game competitively or blunder and curse. I understood why that wasn't fun to be around. But I would be like, okay, you're just doing whatever on your phone and I'm doing whatever on my phone. What's the big deal? And then kind of realize, oh, okay. You can be doing whatever on your phone. And if I turn up and ask you a question, I don't startle you and feel bad that I feel like I've just disrupted or disturbed you. And even if I don't give a shit about the game, I'm playing a doctoric I'm doing. It doesn't feel good for you to feel like you've disrupted me or something. And I really give off that way because of the way that I am when I'm getting sucked into something. And that's just not a thing that you do or feel. Oh, okay, there is a difference there that actually makes sense. So that was like a really cool thing to realize. And I think being diagnosed helped a lot with understanding that. I experienced that as well. And there's a word for that, which is this thing called set shifting. Nice. People with ADHD have a lot of trouble set shifting. So when I'm in that mode and I'm playing chess, for a lot of people when their partner asks them a question, it's very easy to then shift their attention to the love of their life and say, yes, dear. For someone with ADHD, that might be incredibly demanding. Am I even feel impossible? And I also relate to that when I was thinking about trying to do hardcore work for philosophy and my dissertation that one of the reasons why I was always a burst worker was that it kind of felt like getting into the mode where I could write might actually take days or weeks and then getting out of that might take days or weeks. And so I wrote most of my longer things. There would be a month's long period of gestation or gathering material or thoughts or something. And then when I thought I was ready, I would try really hard and fail several times to get in there. And then by the end of it, I would just be so burnt out. And I understood all the books on the habits of productive people or whatever say, don't do that. Do a little bit every day, don't burn out like that. But I think with this idea of set shifting helps me look back on that and be like, OK, I now understand why as much as I could do those little things, it was just very, very difficult to have a clear head or do anything worthwhile in 20 or 30 minutes a day. And so once I realized that I had no interest in working until I was miserable for three weeks and then feeling really bad that I wasn't working enough for like three months, I was like, OK, maybe I should be doing something else. I know you're not, but it does feel like you're sub tweeting me at the last six to eight weeks of my dissertation. Right, but you did it. So like, I'm definitely not sub tweeting you. But so I think also, I know that chess is something that is recommended a lot for people, especially children who diagnose with ADHD as a sort of hobby. And I think that Julia has touched on several reasons why that is. Like the kid who is exhibiting ADHD symptoms, but then also can play video game six hours a day, the thought is, OK, well, if they could hyper focus on something a little bit more productive, socially palatable, socially palatable. Yeah, then video games, which is chess, then the hope is, well, first of all, now instead of my kid plays video games, my kids a chess champion. And I see the arguments like, well, maybe if they learn how to learn chess, they can get better at learning how to learn school, right? Right. And you know, the same argument has been made even among researchers about video games that there can be a lot of rich benefits. But no, I think you're totally right. And I almost have this survivor's guilt about it because one of my big hyper interests when I was growing up were books and novels. So that was one of those things that, again, doesn't carry that same social stigma. So even though I was very distracted and I had my head in a book because of that, I was labeled very different things than a kid who is really interested in something like anime or video games. And I actually think that that is really unfortunate. But you are hitting on something that I think is so important, JJ, where it does seem like there is something about chess. And maybe it is that reward. I wonder if this has shifted as chess has gone more online. And now we have speed chess and rapid chess, which we've talked about, is linked closer to temporally to some of those dopamine responses, where it might be specifically attractive for people with ADHD. And I've encountered so many people have sort of shared their experience with my experience with ADHD and have wondered, is this like a pretty common overlap? Yeah. And it seems like there really might be something to that, although I don't know if there is any empirical or quantitative research on that. Yeah, I would love to know that. I mean, here's one hypothesis. And the reason I brought it up was because you mentioned set shifting, which is a very long slow over the board game is a rare opportunity for the inability to set shift to be a strength rather than a weakness. Exactly. You are not supposed to let your mind wander and consider the outside world and go back to what you're going to do for lunch or something for your four-hour game. I wonder those on what ADHD would say, but there's all these micro set shifts. I get stuck in the weeds of looking at this one tactical line. You're getting into what I'm going to say about my brain. Yeah, go for it. But on the one hand, just to say that the fact that the last tournament I played, I noticed that the game starts at 10 a.m. I ate breakfast. And if this game does go four or five hours, I won't be getting lunch afterwards until three. And that's definitely later than I'll eat. I should probably do something about that. And then suddenly, it's four and a half hours into the game. It's 2.30. And my head is killing me because I'm really hungry. And that's just the first time I notice that. Hungry. And thankfully, by that point, the game is practically over. And the result is taken care of. And I'm just able to bang out a few moves and God food and then take some Tylenol and I'm fine. So on the one hand, from a health and survival perspective, that's really bad. That I just didn't notice how hungry I was and that I needed to eat because I was so unable to be in touch with that while I was focused on the soccer board game. But from a fucking board game perspective, it's really useful that I wasn't starting to figure out three hours into the game. OK, what should I do for food? Should I take some time off my clock and run out or do something? I think that experience is so hard for people who don't process this information or experience the world that way to understand. Yeah. And it's been really interesting. I'm in a relationship with someone who I would describe as very neurotypical. And yeah, and I, I think we both were so baffled by each other's inner world. I think for him to realize, like, wow, you literally do forget to eat. I never thought that that was possible. I couldn't understand how could anyone be so wrapped into something that they don't viscer, feel their own bodily experience, which is really, really common for ADHD. So those kinds of children will often have more accidents, for example, when they're growing up in lower grade school. They're actually not picking up on those cues, those hunger cues, those bathroom cues, the same way as someone without ADHD. Yeah. And if anything, like I feel like the way that I've learned to adapt to that is to try really hard to just knock it sucked into things and to not, not to not. So yeah, which is not necessarily, which is not adaptive too. I'm sorry. That actually makes me really sad to hear. And this is like a lot of the work that I do. I used to work with children and families. I still work with adults and this comes up sometimes. But I that might make the people around us happier. Our business partners, our life partners, our family, our parents. Is that what I think I learned in school? Yeah. Yeah. But there is something so incredibly special about your ability. To get sucked into things and the amount of that deep work that you'll be able to do is what will help you achieve that level of mastery and brilliancy. So to me, I feel almost the opposite. Like the more you can cultivate that in the areas of your life that are important to you and aligned with your values, how can we actually get more of that for you? Well, I mean transitioning into teaching just full time. I've been a way to do that. Has been a way to go, okay, cool. You know, now I don't have to feel guilty about getting so sucked into my hobby that I can't actually think of my like research for days after a chess tournament because I was so sucked into chess world. Or so I think that that has been really helpful. But I think it's just also a reason why the prospect of playing over the board is so exciting to me or going to a chess tournament because as stressful as it is and as exhausted as I am afterwards and oftentimes frustrated, there's something about it that feels like such a vacation because I get to be so sucked into this thing in a way that there's just not a whole lot of outlets for socially. Yeah. And that's so beautiful and cool. I don't know. I think that's awesome. Yeah. How you were able to sort of make sense of that in your life and find a way to fit that in where you didn't feel at odds with your day to day work, your livelihood and this thing that you love. And I know that not everyone has almost that privilege to do it. Not seriously. But are there ways and I can imagine someone in your shoes would feel a lot of pressure to put more of their focus on the quote unquote, prestigious thing. Frankly, the PhD, right? The philosophy, okay, this is my quote unquote work. And I think being able to say, no, this is where my heart is. This is where my brain is. I don't know. I think there's something really special about that. Yeah. And I hope that in sharing this, it kind of helps people who are relating to any part of this, whether they're diagnosed with ADHD or not. Think about, okay, you know, what are the things where I feel like really present and attentive and whatnot, maybe even almost to a detriment and like, how can I play a different role in my life? Or also like, oh, is that why I'm almost so scared of doing these things is because I like don't have the vocabulary or conceptual framework. So for instance, I think what I'm thinking up here is how I don't really identify as a competitive person. And so probably like the things that I'm hardest on my cell phone are like, when I'm unable to get into that point of being able to focus. And then this has come up on the pod before. Like those are the sorts of things where I'm like, wow, I budgeted so much time, money, energy, to get into this ability where I get to have so much fun, hyper focusing on chess, and then was unable to get actually sucked into any of the games I played. That's a really upsetting result for me in a way that is very different than like, I just want to win more games. And I think that there's this kind of been hard to express that or make sense of that. Yeah, I think it's such a cool conversation. And I don't know, I feel so strongly about this stuff, just between you and I. Obviously, I've seen the way it affects, especially kids, but even into adulthood, just people self-esteem. And I don't know, I feel so strongly. I really just want everyone to cultivate it as much as possible as opposed to like, I need to figure out a way to not get sucked in. I'm just like hearing you talk about it and your experience doing that, I think is really cool. And I don't know, it's a conversation that I've had with Michael too. I mean, my first year grad school was so hard for this exact reason. I got really bad feedback after my first year from faculty at Michigan, basically saying, it seems like you weren't paying attention in my class. And I noticed and I felt so much shame. I wanted to drop out. Yeah. I felt like such a piece of shit. And I spent five weeks in Madison after my first year here. Very much contemplating. I don't want to go back because I can't operate in this environment. I cannot sit in these three hour seminars and attend. And I, Michael was really the one who was like, I know that the classroom setting is so hard for you. I'm watching you struggle. I think you need to go to a therapist, but definitely be medicated. But I also know that the work that you do with your clients and your research is brilliant. And I know you'll be good at it and I know you'll be happy doing it. Like, can you jump through the hoops? I'm so happy you have that support. Yeah. And I, it's really funny to me now as a fifth year who just defended and graduated. And got really kind feedback from the whole faculty and the whole department. You know, when I gave that job talk. Yeah. And it actually made me feel really angry. Yeah. Because there's one person in particular when I was a first year who said incredibly unkind things about me and my character. And I believed all of that. I was like grieving, JJ. I literally went back to Madison where Michael was living. And I just felt so much regret. Like, why couldn't I just do what everyone else was doing? He was the one who was very much like those things that you were self-loathing about right now is literally why I fell in love with you. I love the way your mind works. I love the way you're kind of daydreamy and your head is in the clouds. But the thoughts you're having are so cool. And you make me feel really excited. And that passion is there. That's what will make you a good clinical psychologist. So then when I gave this job talk and this person in front of my whole department was like, lauding me like, oh, this is what a job talk should be. This is what a dissertation should look like. I just sort of want to be like, fuck you. Yeah. You made my life fucking miserable for two years. I'm here in spite of you. And a lot of people in this department are unhappy because of you. So then when they're successful, you don't get to be like, yes, this is what this department is producing. I almost dropped out because of you. I had a really weird response to it. I can't marvel at how I told you this anyway. This is like why I feel so strongly. I don't think that's a weird response at all. Because if anything, like the pressure was either to drop out or to like conform to his idea of what this looked like, and you managed to, well, to what degree you like learned how to jump through the hoops. I don't know, but you didn't produce excellent work because you jump through the hoops and they changed you as a person. You just got through the hoops. You figured out how to go a little bit more undetected and continue to be you. And then you as you did brilliant stuff and in lauding you for it, he's almost, it's like taking credit not just for like, oh, as if I helped you, but also taking credit for like, yeah, I trained that bad and attentive behavior out of you and then made you this. And it's like, no, like I managed to keep enough of that to be successful despite you. So I don't think that's a weird reaction at all. Yeah. Yes, JJ, that's exactly it. And so many people in my cohort, like I literally have friends who have said to me, I feel like grad school stomped the passion out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I felt fucking stomped on. And it was more like I just decided to emotionally divest. I decided I was dropping out. I was like, I'm going to do one more year and get the masters and then I'm leaving. And then once I didn't give a shit, I just did what I wanted to do anyway. And yeah, I was fucking good at it. Like just let me do my fucking thing. And I think people just saw that and left me alone. But man, my first year here was the worst year of my life. I know that none of this is for the pod. It was just a rant that I need to go on. I kind of, I don't see, but yeah, I think what I wanted to make sure I got put in there was actually you alluded to earlier circling back to how ADHD can relate not just to whether or not you can focus on chess or how you, but actually once you're playing chess, like how you think about chess. And I actually do have one thought here from my own experience and from a couple of my students, obviously unscientific. But I think a pop conception of ADHD is just somebody who can't focus. And this is something Julia had said and said it's just false. And so you think, wow, how can somebody with ADHD even play chess? Like aren't they just going to be pen-pollying between like 50 ideas all the time? Right. And like this was how I was treated in my program. Like I said, like someone with their head and their clouds who cannot show up in focus, which is a misnomer. Yeah. Well, you said that it's not attention deficit as much as it's just the attention mismatch. So I think what will actually happen is you get a good idea in your head on the board and suddenly unbeknownst to you, you are calculating that variation. You are trying to make this idea work. And sometimes it's a really obvious idea or at the very least a really logical idea. And then suddenly this thing can happen where you start getting magnetically pulled to things that either should be assessed but not calculated or are super interesting, but aren't the only or even the key thing. and then this kind of hyper fixation comes in where it becomes very, very difficult to do that or if you try to avoid the hyper fixation, then you're suddenly pin-pulling between multiple ideas. - And that was kind of something I hadn't mentioned earlier in this conversation was the idea of being able to set shift within these sub-fixations within the chess game. You might feel kind of stuck in the weeds. Like once I get hyper fixated on this one idea or this one variation, it's almost hard for me to see the forest above the trees. - Right, and so one thing that I've found is really helpful for that I have advised for people to struggle with this is not to stop hyper focusing or suddenly be able to look at things linearly one by one and not get fixated to the exclusion of others or unable to balance them, that's hard. But to instead say, okay, I'm going to try and address that fixation at the level of ideas, plans, etc stuff that you look at before you're considering specific moves. Because once you're considering a move, you're considering that move to the exclusion of others, then you're in a position where you're fixated on this one idea to the exclusion of others in a way that might actually be good, but you're not fixated on one move to the exclusion of others in a way that might be bad. - Yeah, oh, I love that idea. And then you're able to really go down some cool paths and some rabbit holes that your opponent might miss. - Yeah. - Because I think something that can be very dangerous is the people who might be very good at holding multiple candidate moves in their head and evaluating them one at a time, but not to the exclusion of others, might still miss what some of the key ideas are behind the moves. And so if you can really focus on one goal that you have and not be juggling multiple goals or not be kind of oblivious as to what your overall goal is, that can allow you to find candidates and plans and variations much better than somebody who is going a bit more linearly and methodically. And that might be a type of shift that I've heard you talk about, even how are you using your opponent's time? Instead of thinking about what are the candidate moves or what are the possible variations, thinking about strategic ideas. So like what are the themes I can start to look at? So if someone can let themselves kind of get in the weeds with that instead, it sounds like it actually could be really adaptive. - Exactly, especially because when you start with a move, then it's really hard to not just play the move or to see ways to tweak the move or to realize that if this is the move you're trying to play, then there's actually three other moves that can help support that move because they all connect to the same plan. So to try and be like, I'm going to fixate on this week color complex, on getting this piece off the board, on improving the structure on this part. And now I'm not fixated on one move or one variation to the exclusion of others, but I'm doing what I'm supposed to do actually. It's like being able to treat whatever you're thinking about strategically as the key until it's time to move on. And then being able to go back and assess which one should I prioritize as being most likely to be the key can actually really help your chest in a way that I think is just going full circle to which really it was saying of a way of these really are different kinds of intelligence and different learning styles. - Yeah, of course. - And it's just that it's very easy, especially when there's flashy or complicated tactical moves to have that approach hook on to a specific variation. But the desire to fixate on one thing I don't think is bad for chest. It's just when you pick a move, you're kind of throwing a dart at the board and hoping that it lands on the right first move at the right variation. - Yeah, and I just love that. That to me is the big takeaway here is that these ways of thinking are not something that we need to fix or change. Just how can we harness it? How can we utilize it? And it's the same conversation that we even had about emotional regulation to start with. - Right. - We are not trying to suppress our emotions or drown them underwater. We're just trying to figure out how can we sit on this power horse and direct it where we want it to go. And this is the exact same way. And I am so glad, JJ, that you brought that full circle and talked about it in the context of chests. 'Cause like I said, I feel so strongly that there are all these societal expectations about how can we eradicate or sublime these things that we see as an inconvenient mode of thinking and instead saying, no, how can we actually use these in such a way that is at an advantage of moving this thing forward? - I can own that shit. - Yeah, and I saw that, like I said, in my own life experience where it really was my superpower and was treated like it was my problem and we're not cool with that. - We're not cool with that. Okay, so there you have it. 15 episodes that you never knew you needed. - You didn't know deep down. There was a hole in your heart. And you were looking for me and JJ and you found that. - Obviously all of our listeners knew that their life was incomplete. They just didn't know why. - Yeah, or where to look. Where to fill that hole. - We're here to fill that hole. - Always. Thanks for listening to Chess Holes. (laughing) - Your two favorite switches were here for you. - And as always, plug your light squared holes in front of your king. (laughing) - Don't leave holes in your pond structure. At least not the wrong ones. One of the whole jokes can we make. - I don't know. - Well, okay, then. - You never forced anything. Why don't we ever been one to force any kind of joke? And that's the one joke about holes we don't make. (laughing) - Yeah, that's true. Damn it, that was so good. (upbeat music) - One. (upbeat music) - Yeah. - As always, thank you for letting us take you into this deep dark forest. - We're two plus two equals five. And the path leading out is only wide enough for listeners like you. - And show an outro music provided by Jay Pegmothia. - We would be truly touched if you subscribe and leave us a glowing review. - Until all of your friends. - Yeah, all of them. - And every week we'll be gifting one lucky subscriber on who leaves a five-star review, a lifetime premium diamond membership to the chest.org. - Unlocking all of their features. - Even that? - Especially that. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter at test feels pot. - Oh, and if you didn't like what you heard, you not hesitate to message any feedback. - No matter how critical or scabbing. - Directly to Mr. Dodgy, our social media manager, even though he doesn't know it. - Just problem. - One. - One. - One. (upbeat music) - Yeah.