Avoidance of Writing That Requires Sustained Mental Effort
ADHD is real and wants to eat me alive
The Frontier Psychiatrists is a reader-supported health-themed newsletter. It’s written by Owen Muir, M.D.
Oh my god. I just can’t. I have an academic paper to finish. I should be writing it now. Not this. And yet…here we are. The thing you are reading right now? To you, it might be a light snack of an article. It might get forwarded to a friend. It might sit unread in your inbox.
To your author, it is:
A scathing indictment of my work ethic
An attempt to avoid adult responsibility and demonstrate how Owen will let down others again because he is so lazy.
procrastination
a symptom of ADHD
It's not a multiple-choice question. It's all of those things at once.
I will explain. For the last year, more or less, I've been working with a group of authors. I am the senior author of a collection of papers. We have submitted the first seven papers to the journal in question. They are being reviewed. There is one more paper that needs to be finished, which I am responsible for. The first author …