I mean, obviously doing complex math on the fly is probably harder than remembering what a pencil is for, but compared to your healthy level of functioning, are certain areas more badly hit than others? For me, when I'm having a "bad brain day" (or hour or moment or week or year...), I find that certain types of thinking are much more difficult and more taxing on my resources than others. I wondered if there were any similarities across us all, or if each person's stronger/weaker areas were more individual.
For me,
-Speaking and writing in a train-of-thought way is WAY easier than reflecting on what I'm saying as I say it, or trying to edit things I've already written. I've pretty much trained myself now not to try to pay attention to what I say, as I know I'll just end up getting stuck searching for words, with long gaps where my memory fails me, etc. (this also explains why I ramble so long here sometimes! )
-If someone is talking while I'm talking (interrupting or what have you), I find it nearly impossible to take in what they're saying. Sometimes I can't even register that they're speaking until after. Not just that it's tough to pay attention to exactly what they're saying, but that I can't even take in that they're forming words.
-When my mental reserves aren't great, I find comparing information or anything else where I have to hold two different pieces of info in my head at once really hard to impossible. For example, which of these two options is the better deal, or remember this information while you figure out where it goes in a form, or any really abstract concept with a lot of details, trying to make sense of a spreadsheet with a lot of different steps to it (on a bad day, even one that once would have been completely obvious). Maybe that's part of why decisions and editing text are both extra hard now, but it seems to apply to everything. I just CAN'T hold onto two pieces of info at once and make sense of them both. As soon as I focus on one, I lose the other. Or I try to keep both and just end up really badly mentally strained.
I find it interesting that some parts of my mind seem so strongly affected while others are mostly in tact (within reason). I can answer trivia questions right now if you ask them to me one at a time and get the right answer quite quickly. ...But if I have to read a crossword puzzle clue, then look down the page to also find out where that answer goes and keep both of those pieces in mind to get an answer, I run out of steam surprisingly fast.
Really it all seems to come down to that trouble with keeping my brain focused on more than one thing at once, I guess. It's not just using more resources overall, because I can still do tricky one-track thinking much better than simple two-track thinking. Just wondered if anyone else recognized the same pattern in themselves, or any different pattern to their cognitive challenges.
For me,
-Speaking and writing in a train-of-thought way is WAY easier than reflecting on what I'm saying as I say it, or trying to edit things I've already written. I've pretty much trained myself now not to try to pay attention to what I say, as I know I'll just end up getting stuck searching for words, with long gaps where my memory fails me, etc. (this also explains why I ramble so long here sometimes! )
-If someone is talking while I'm talking (interrupting or what have you), I find it nearly impossible to take in what they're saying. Sometimes I can't even register that they're speaking until after. Not just that it's tough to pay attention to exactly what they're saying, but that I can't even take in that they're forming words.
-When my mental reserves aren't great, I find comparing information or anything else where I have to hold two different pieces of info in my head at once really hard to impossible. For example, which of these two options is the better deal, or remember this information while you figure out where it goes in a form, or any really abstract concept with a lot of details, trying to make sense of a spreadsheet with a lot of different steps to it (on a bad day, even one that once would have been completely obvious). Maybe that's part of why decisions and editing text are both extra hard now, but it seems to apply to everything. I just CAN'T hold onto two pieces of info at once and make sense of them both. As soon as I focus on one, I lose the other. Or I try to keep both and just end up really badly mentally strained.
I find it interesting that some parts of my mind seem so strongly affected while others are mostly in tact (within reason). I can answer trivia questions right now if you ask them to me one at a time and get the right answer quite quickly. ...But if I have to read a crossword puzzle clue, then look down the page to also find out where that answer goes and keep both of those pieces in mind to get an answer, I run out of steam surprisingly fast.
Really it all seems to come down to that trouble with keeping my brain focused on more than one thing at once, I guess. It's not just using more resources overall, because I can still do tricky one-track thinking much better than simple two-track thinking. Just wondered if anyone else recognized the same pattern in themselves, or any different pattern to their cognitive challenges.