why do stimulants help ADHD? well, they short circuit the part where your brain figures out what priorities to trust based on whether they achieve your true motives
I view taking stimulants more as a move to get the more reflective parts of my brain more power (“getting my taxes done is good, because we need to do it eventually, now is actually a good time, doing my taxes now will be as boring as doing them in the future, rather than playing magic the gathering now”) in steering compared to my more primitive “true motives” that tend to be hyperbolicly discounted (“dosing in bed is nice”, “washing dishes is boring”, “doing taxes is boring”). Maybe I am horrible at self-modelling, but the part where the self model is out of sync as an explanation why the self-reflective parts have less steering power seems unnecessary.
I view taking stimulants more as a move to get the more reflective parts of my brain more power (“getting my taxes done is good, because we need to do it eventually, now is actually a good time, doing my taxes now will be as boring as doing them in the future, rather than playing magic the gathering now”) in steering compared to my more primitive “true motives” that tend to be hyperbolicly discounted (“dosing in bed is nice”, “washing dishes is boring”, “doing taxes is boring”). Maybe I am horrible at self-modelling, but the part where the self model is out of sync as an explanation why the self-reflective parts have less steering power seems unnecessary.