Well, I’ve come to think that my grandfather probably had adhd. He had a reputation for being somewhat lazy, he played in a Jazz Band and played multiple instruments. He also tended to work half the year down in Florida building homes and then came back with the money for half a year up north doing the stuff he liked to do.

He probably built some of the homes during the Florida housing bubble in the twenties.

To me, that sounds very ADHD-like. Granddad was born in the late 1890s and passed in the early 80s. He was also known for surviving the Spanish Flu, walking several miles to the hospital.

I think some of the other comments here are probably spot on, and of course they would have family to fall on for a little bit of help with those things they have trouble with.

it feels like no one is thinking of this in the way I do:

what was 1800s USA known for? westward colonization, civil war, slavery, and industrial revolution.

what are ADHDers in a broad sense? divergent thinkers.

what do they do in challenging situations? think divergently.

what comes from thinking divergently? workarounds and exploration

what’s another name for exploration (plus of course land exploitation and indigenous marginalization)? colonization and settlement

and

what’s another name for workarounds? inventions

what is the aggregate name for inventions of the 1800s? industrial revolution

and

what do ADHDers sometimes/often do in stressful situations? act impulsively

what is one famous consequence of leaders and societies acting impulsively, within their own country? war, especially civil war

and

i don’t want to think about the horror of slavery right now so imagine that part yourself if you feel it necessary.

anyways, the way i see it ADHDers and other Neurodivergents were all over usa history, top to bottom, inside and out, for better and for worse. world history too.

it’s true that farming/ranching maybe not be the best for certain spiky profiles. but being born to farmer parents doesn’t mean you have to be a farmer. unless of course your parents are enslaved farmers.

There’s a great podcast called ADHD BCE that goes into this.

Long story short, there are plenty of benefits to hyperfocusing and having performance maximised in more novel and interesting situation in the deeper past.

Wasn’t cocaine pretty available back then? Problem solved…

ADHD likey helped us in the wild , but hinders us in a society that needs to eek out every bit of cognitive ability to be harnessed by a very rigid system that is very opinionated about how we can contribute. Back then there was probably less incentive to deny your natural affinities instead of something more lucrative. As an ADHD’r I see something familiar in the journals of Davinci, but also in the eyes of the gold rush 49ers.

And to top it all off, nobody has ever heard of ADHD, let alone any medication, therapy or understanding for it.

I hate to say it but you don’t have to go back as far as the 1800’s for that, you can go back to the 1980’s because that’s exactly how it felt for me in rural America. It wasn’t even a thought, some kids were just spazzes was literally the line of reasoning they had. If you didn’t have downs syndrome or nonverbal autism you were with the rest of the kids in a normal class and expected to perform as everyone else with no exceptions.

I actually think it would be the opposite. I imagine during the American push west it drew the novelty seekers, the people who weren’t afraid of change and dynamic settings. Neurotypical people would probably stay home. Also, a study from 2024 had results that favored ADHD people when they had to perform a foraging simulation. The impulse to move on and explore is well suited to it. My family has started trying to do a little homesteading, and wow the skills that are involved and the amount of problem solving means there is always something new to do. We are constantly challenged to work with our hands to find creative and affordable solutions. Animals and dependents create external accountability. Deadlines aren’t just meaningless bullshit on a calendar, they are real things that become vitally important enough to awaken the “panic monster”. I’m sure there would be struggles for an ADHD person to do everything, but this was also a time where no one would be doing it alone. Farms and homesteads would hardly ever be a “nuclear family” mom/dad/kid unit. You would have had grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, transient labor, etc etc. The homestead would have a dozen or more people on it, so if you had executive issues with cooking but a hyper fixation on gardening, there would be other people to cover for you. If you were having trouble getting started on something, another household member might get everything needed together and then get you to help them do it instead.

I’m not going to try to sell it as a paradise or perfect existence but I do think that societies and communities used to have a lot more flexibility to accomodate neurospicy individuals. This era we find ourselves in is unique because we have never had so many households of so few people. Throughout history we have had tribes and communities and big households, and neurodivergent people were given a place because they were family members and a part of those communities. Now we are all expected to fend for ourselves completely alone, of course we can’t do it all.

Someone else may have already said this

I think it would be easier because it’s real life stuff being done.

In the modern world things are basically unatural and fake so the drive to do them is not full.

My dad is 75 years old, and he doesn’t have ADHD because no one of his age has it. To be honest, his ADHD only became apparent in the last 20 years or so, before that he was just one of those act-before-thinking persons.

Do you think the constant barrage of bings and boops and standards and alarms and goals and deals and sales and reminders and obligations and deadlines would just

…stop? In a lot of ways I imagine it could be much, much easier. In a way.

I don’t think ADHD is nearly the same kind of problem for a preindustrial citizen. I certainly didn’t have trouble with symptoms during my decade as a labourer (besides showing up late and forgetting the thing I was supposed to do after the first thing).

It would depend on the situation. I don’t think tailoring is a great trade for an ADHDer, but perhaps it depends on the person.

Farming would have been a nightmare, but being a pirate would have been ace.

Also because we are more beholden to the intrusive inclinations of our natural body signals something like a bought of famine might be more traumatizing for an ADHD’r back when trauma was still a valuable survival technique.

Well given that this didn’t really start to change in rural areas until the mid-20th century, you could ask anyone alive then.

The difference from even the early 1970’s in rural areas to today is staggering.

Really interesting question. Specifically thinking about out in the wild west I can imagine 2 scenarios.

1. is that everyone would go to church on a Sunday and perhaps get an idea on what neighbours are doing: planting, harvesting, etc.

2. It’s the weather & season that defines when crops should be planted, rather than a fixed date.