I have no idea if I have ADHD, but I certainly have "presented" that way for my entire life.

I dropped out of high school after moving from private to public, since it was utterly worthless and a waste of my time. I logically knew I could just stick it out another 2 years and party, but I literally could not force myself to wake up to do it. I contemplated suicide over this, so it's not something I was taking lightly at the time or not caring about. I ended up just taking the GED one day on a whim.

Then I went on to have a somewhat successful career. It took me years to realize/internalize I'm not just lazy - something is different about me. Very few folks in my peer group could keep up with my work ethic once I found things I was interested in. For me this doesn't mean I only do the "fun stuff" - it means I need to see results of my effort, and those results need to be meaningful. I also need to work on things with a definitive "end" to them - not a never-ending project that won't see a single real-world result for years.

I describe it to folks that I am literally allergic to busy-work. You could offer me a million dollars to do some busy-work task for a month and I already know I'd fail at it before I started.

If the consequences or rewards are large and immediate enough you can kind of "push through" it - but if it's some concept of a future consequence or reward the brain simply decides it does not care.

This is all pretty difficult to nail down I think because I'm simply describing what other folks have certainly felt to some degree. The difference is I don't know many folks who will trade weeks of mental anguish and lots of money to avoid doing a 30 minute task.

That said, lazy often looks pretty damn similar and it's easy to have an excuse on hand.

> For me this doesn't mean I only do the "fun stuff" - it means I need to see results of my effort, and those results need to be meaningful.

You nailed it here - anticipation for results is one of the greatest motivations I can have. If it's not there, things get really hard. I don't think it can be sufficient on its own, but it sure needs to be there.

That said - some kinds of what's essentially busy-work can be pretty rewarding in this regard too. There were periods where I caught myself doing plenty of non-creative and rather trivial distro packaging at work just because it was providing me with a quick feedback loop. It wasn't interesting or challenging, but a meaningful chunk of work could be completed before I got bored and seeing it done was rewarding enough to keep going.

All those activities requires lots of focus. If we don't focus when doing them we will spill out stuff, or miss stuff when cleaning etc, and that makes people angry. Trying to do the right thing and focus on the task is basically impossible, so then there is no choice but to get screamed at by angry people who thinks we are lazy and defiant, no wonder we get angry and irritated...