Why you should thank an ADHD person today (we saved you)

James Julian
3 min readFeb 28, 2024

You know, I’ve never been ashamed of having ADHD.

I’ve always considered it to be a bit of a superpower, and not in the trite way that people say it to make those with ADHD feel better about themselves.

It allows me to get laser-focused on things that actually interest me, but it also keeps me seeking novelty, looking around for new ideas and things to explore, and integrating that knowledge into my everyday life.

Yeah, sometimes having my brain hop around like popcorn kernels in a frying pan is inconvenient, but in creative pursuits, it can be super beneficial.

And it turns out that ADHD behavior might have actually helped our ancestors survive … and shaped our world as you know it.

A recent study credits ADHD-type foraging behavior for ancient human survival. (Licensed by the author under the Unsplash+ License)

ADHD and human development

Recently, I came across a Newsweek article about new research on how ADHD behavior helped humans thrive as hunter-gatherers and expand as a species.

According to the article, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Indian Institute of Technology recruited 457 Americans to participate in a foraging computer task.

They asked participants to collect as many berries as they could in a set length of time.

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