Tolerance, Tolerations, and ADHD Sensitivity

It’s the little things that really suck your life away.

Image by andergrin from Pixabay

In Adam Savage’s sort-of-autobiography Every Tool’s a Hammer, he dedicates an entire chapter to the engineering concept of “tolerances”. He’s using the word in the context of measurement — that is, how precisely a machine part has been measured to specification. “I need this fitting to be accurate to within .0001 of an inch, with a tolerance of +/- .00002”.

He incorporates this idea into his eighth commandment for DIY makers:

Measure carefully. Have some tolerance. You know what tolerance is? If something fits tightly into something — that’s a close tolerance. If something fits loosely, that’s a loose tolerance. Knowing the difference between tight and loose tolerance is perhaps the most important measure of a craftsperson.

Essentially, it’s wiggle room. He talks about how having a “loose tolerance” for yourself is helpful, because it gives you permission to make mistakes and learn from them.

The reason a BMW Z4 is so much faster and quieter than my Toyota Scion has to do with tolerance: even in something as small as the turn signal, you can feel how the parts have been engineered to fit together more precisely on the BMW. There’s no wiggle. Having that kind of tight tolerance is an advantage in any mechanism because every vibration, friction, and impact between parts is a bit of energy that is wasted.

I read that, and it stuck in my brain, especially when I happened to be chatting with an ADHD coach.

Tolerations taking toll

And then there is the concept of “tolerations”, from the ADHD coaching world*.

Tolerations are the things we put up with, even though they bother us or make our lives more difficult. They come in many forms — physical clutter, draining relationships, unfulfilling work, unhealthy habits, and so on. The more tolerations we allow in our lives, the more our vitality and effectiveness is sapped. — Hellen M. Ndirangu, What Are You Tolerating?

Any one of us could come up with a zillion tolerances we put up with, probably even as you’re reading this. All you have to do is “pay attention to what you pay attention to”, as another ADHD writer put it.

As I type this,

• the chair I’m sitting has an edge uncomfortably cutting into my thighs

• my coffee is lukewarm

• there is a conversation at a nearby table that keeps stealing my attention

• I’m worried about how much time I have left to write this article

I could go on, but that’s not the point.

It’s also not the point to pretend that only ADHD people put up with tolerations. Everyone has something around them that they find annoying or irritating, but ignore anyway. But like most ADHD symptoms, it is not the effect itself that is the problem: it’s the level of impact and frequency that is the problem.

A neurotypical person might feel the chair digging into their thighs and be fine with just putting up with it and writing the article. They notice it, and move on.

An ADHD brain like mine, on the other hand, might have trouble writing any other part of the article because the brain keeps going back to the Problem of the Edge of the Chair.

The Intolerable Consequence of Tolerations

It might even make me write three paragraphs about it — which means, just like loose tolerances in a machine, it is using up energy. I’m literally expending calories, resilience, and even spoons by struggling to get the words of this essay past the Problem of the Edge of the Chair because my brain keeps coming back to it.

That’s a lot of energy being wasted — in a world that is already exhausting for people with ADHD, because our Executive Function Engines do not have very tight tolerances for the neurotypical world we live in.

But as I said, that’s not the point.

The point is, what can we do about it?

Right now, I have two suggestions:

1. Google the idea of “tolerations” yourself (there’s a lot written about this, as well as what to do about it), or

2. Wait for the next article after this one, in which I will talk about it andgive you examples from the last couple of weeks of what I googled, what I tried, and how it worked.

You can also go halfway, because the one thing that both Adam Savage and most ADHD coaches agree on is: step one is to make a list of all the things you’re putting up with now, that feel like they’re stealing a little (or a lot) of energy every time you encounter them. People, places, events, things, in your brain, in your body — just list’em.

We’ll do something with that list later.

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