focus, leonardo

"Inhibition may have an opposite impact on two aspects of creativity:
convergent thinking and divergent thinking. [...] Thus, poor
inhibitory control may present a disadvantage for individuals with
ADHD on convergent thinking tasks, such as the Remote Associates Task,
that benefit from strong inhibitory control. In contrast, given the
positive relationship between poor inhibitory control and divergent
thinking, individuals with ADHD may show above average divergent
thinking. [...] On the other hand, some models of creativity suggest
that both the ability to diffuse attention and generate ideas, and the
ability to focus attention and work within certain constraints, may be
important for actual creative production." --
http://proadhd.nl/White_Shah_ADHDCreativity_PAID.pdf

Circumstantial evidence: a friend of mine who is more towards the ADHD
end of the spectrum has told me on several occasions that he thinks I
am very good at relating otherwise unrelated things (convergent
thinking). Am I comparatively bad at coming up with alternatives? I
must admit that although I like to think all over the place, I often
do so through the use of textual aids (e.g. using Gathatoulie posts to
record weird ideas -- which I then later draw connections between).

My guess is that I think more towards the high anxiety ("inhibited")
end of the spectrum (cf.
http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2011/11/old-mail-amy-g.html,
http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2011/10/self-agency-reward-and-anxiety.html)
-- which makes my own issues with focus and attention somewhat
curious.

Perhaps instead of what would be called divergent thinking (generating
ideas), I sensitively search and observe the world I'm in. Hm... it's
also curious that at the same time as having a fairly strong ability
to put up with things and deal with problems by self-soothing (not
always the best way, I might add), I also seem to have fairly bad
impulse control when it comes to things like budgeting money or
playing cards or whatever. Maybe being creative isn't always the best
blend for dealing with normal day to day life? In fact I'm pretty
sure it isn't. To put it another way, creativity and adaptivity are
vastly different things.