ADD or Just Boredom?

Dad said something a few weeks ago that stuck with me. I was complaining to him about this feeling I've had lately that I might have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). I'm not really able to focus on any one activity for very long, and this is nothing new, but I just started noticing others who can concentrate on something for hours without losing focus and I began to think something must be wrong with me.

Dad had a different take on it. After joking that I've been that way my whole life, he came to another conclusion. Perhaps the reason I think can't concentrate as much as I'd like is that I just haven't found something that I'm all that interested in. And if I did, I might suddenly find myself "cured" of my disorder.

Hmmm ... Could he be right? Am I just not interested in anything? For years I attributed my lack of focus to depression, which is valid enough, but I'm not depressed anymore. As I gave it more thought, I had to admit he might be onto something. If he was, surely there would be examples from my past of periods of acute interest and focus.

Last year, when I first read Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover, I became intensely interested in personal finance. I spent hours developing and tweaking my first budget spreadsheet. I became hyper-focused on maintaining a debt-free lifestyle and developed a plan to create an emergency fund of six months worth of expences. It took a year to achieve that goal, but I did it. That's focus, right?

The problem is that the intensity of focus eventually faded. When I began my community garden, I was focused. When I lost 40 pounds with Body for Life I was focused. And now I'm laughing about my two months of cycling. For a few weeks I thought I might turn into one of those bike-across-America people. But over time, those interests became, well, less interesting.

So. What do I do with this information? For now, I investigate. Is the key to continually find new interests? Is there a long-term interest for which I've barely tapped the surface? Is thinking about interests an interest in an of itself?

More to come. But first a shout-out to Dad. Sometimes you know what you're talking about after all.