Seeming kind of slow - ADHD from the Outside vs. the Chaos Within

Or: Forgetting where I'm going three steps in

Even as a child, my mom would ask: “Why are you so slow?”
And honestly, I didn’t know.

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The past and the current self

Getting ready for school in the morning for instance.

It always felt like a time warp.
I would keep looking at the clock so I wouldn't leave too late, because the moment I looked away, its hands seemed to leap forward.
I would switch back and forth between being in a hurry and suddenly getting lost in thought for an unpredictable amount of time.
Even though I had to do the same things to get ready every single morning, I would have to stop in between tasks, trying to remember what else I had to do.

Understandably, my mom could not see what was going on inside my head.
On the outside, I just seemed slow.
One moment I’d be brushing my teeth, the next I’d be staring at the tiles, thinking about lyrics stuck in my head – which made it entirely unpredictable how long brushing my teeth would actually take.
I’d randomly switch between bedroom and bathroom, constantly remembering, forgetting, re-remembering things.
Looking back, I probably looked like I was glitching – not just slow.

As of now…
I have the same weird habits to this day. Didn't grow out of those.
Only now the glitching loop includes the living room and kitchen.

Photo by Macarena Ollarzú on Unsplash

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Or active listening and focusing on tasks.

Having this kind of drifting attention impacts many areas of life.

Other than having to put a lot of effort if you want to be punctual (and sometimes no amount of effort is enough for that), you might have sat in school listening to the teacher speak and realise suddenly that your ears apparently just skipped listening to their past few sentences.
Taking written tests was difficult because your mind jumped to completely unrelated topics mid-sentence.
Or you had trouble actively reading or analysing the question.
You read something, but it didn't register in your brain as a cohesive sentence, the words not coming together to build the actual meaning.

As for me nowadays: Work luckily doesn’t usually include doing tasks with a set timer of 30 to 90 minutes.
Doesn’t mean the rest of the problems changed though.
Sadly, work tasks generally don’t fall in an area I could hyperfocus on either.
So yes, I also heard the sentence of me being slow from my boss before.

When I asked to reduce my hours because of depression (before I knew I had ADHD), my boss’s immediate reaction was: “Is that why you are always so slow?”. Ouch.

To be fair, my ADHD and depression combo made focus almost impossible. Some days I’d stare at the screen for hours and barely get anything done. Calling me slow was putting it nice.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t lazy. I was drowning in executive dysfunction – and nobody saw it. Not even myself.

But back to the main topic.

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Being slow was always a thing in my life. It also always will be.

And that is not a bad thing.

Yes, school wasn’t made for it. And sometimes, the rest of life isn’t either.

But most of the time, as adults, the person most bothered by our speed is ourselves. We still feel the shadow of our inner child being admonished — even though we’re now far more independent in how we work and live.

So we rush ourselves until we burn out — and then fall even further behind.

That’s the point when people who never noticed our pace suddenly start to mind it. Because that’s when task paralysis kicks in, and we can’t even keep up the slow setting we usually would have worked at.

When drifting attention turns into no attention — except for your internal doubt spiral.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.
If we treated ourselves with just a little more kindness, if we stopped expecting overdrive when we’re already low on fuel — maybe we’d see that, sometimes, slow and steady really does win the race.

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Am I just not smart enough?

I know what some people might be thinking. Especially those who have never lived with an ADHD brain.

Maybe I’m just not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Maybe ADHD is just an excuse for not trying hard enough.

But here’s the truth:

ADHD messes with your attention, your working memory, your processing speed – not your intelligence.

I was one of the lucky kids.
I never really doubted my brain that way. I always knew I was quick to understand things, to connect dots others missed.
Having understanding parents and some great teachers along the way definitely helped, too.

When I later took an IQ test and scored 135, I wasn’t even surprised.
(And no, I don’t carry that around as a badge. Yes, you’re free to roll your eyes.)

But the thing is: even when you know you’re smart, ADHD can make you feel broken.

Because I can be smart enough for my thesis professor to ask if I wanted to pursue a doctorate - while at the same time being incapable of not losing my phone eight times a day inside my own flat.

Because even the simplest tasks can feel impossible. And no one sees how hard your brain is already working.

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A final note

So yes – I’m indeed “kind of slow”.

My brain’s doing backflips behind the curtain, and sometimes I circle the same hallway five times before I find the exit.

But I’m learning to move with it, not against it.
To stop chasing the pace of others — and build a rhythm of my own.

Because being “slow” is a small price to pay for the way my mind connects, creates, and perceives.

And maybe you feel that too — even if you sometimes forget.

You’re not broken.

Your song just moves to a different beat.
So let yourself dance to it. It’s yours.