A Personal View of the ICNUP Framework for ADHD

Fidget slug on the back of a Microsoft Surface tablet. Fidgets are useful to improve listening and focus.

I’ve talked a bit about ADHD and interest. One of the things I’ve come across recently is Dr. William Dodson’s ICNUP Framework (see part 1 of this video called The Interest Based Nervous System). In this video, Dr. Dodson says that

“Boredom and lack of engagement is almost physically painful to people with an ADHD nervous system.”

His insight that ADHD people are interest motivated and not as others are, importance motivated*. This can be a way of understanding ADHD people, but it can also be used as a way for those with ADHD to align their motivation with the outside world.

• Interest/fascination: In the presentation, I didn’t see ‘fascination’ defined, but I’ve seen it elsewhere described as ‘fun.’ Maybe I could look at this as self-directed activity without a strong reward/penalty system. For me, reading literature is fascinating as is creating and leveraging semantic data models in Power BI.

• Challenge or competition: once mastered, things become less challenging. It now makes sense that I would read the largest work in Chaucer class and skimp out on the short readings. Or that I would buy and read a dozen books for a class I couldn’t get into in grad school (Literature of Desire).

  Competition can be a bit tricky because rewards are often a part of importance-based motivation. Any time the importance-based motivation becomes more prominent than interest-based motivation, there’s a risk that motivation can be lost. On the other hand, food delivers dopamine, so that can be an effective reward.

• Novelty or creativity: after a while, the new thing is no longer new. Creating is interesting— maintaining not so much. Jessica with How to HDHD channel talks about FOLI, the fear of losing interest. For this reason, it’s good for me to have a job where I can solve new problems, work with diverse teams, and learn new tools.

• Urgency - deadline: This is often how extrinsic importance becomes interesting for someone with ADHD. I’ve enjoyed jobs where I had regular deadlines and it gave me a sense that of completion. In school, however, putting everything off to the last minute was not a good strategy.

• Passion: for me, passion is most tied to people: the person of Jesus, my wife and children. With work I look for opportunities where I can address real needs of people and empower them to do their jobs better. Passion can sustain me when other motivators fail.

Overall, I appreciate this approach to ADHD. It’s positive and it helps set people up for success by better understanding how they approach life.

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* Importance-based: it seems to me that this is a primary orientation to the group instead of interest. I really like this summary of importance-based motivation from this blog post: The ADHD Nervous System. The author also discusses ADHD motivation as well:
”

1. Importance.
   Tasks that are important or a priority to you.

2. Secondary importance.
   Tasks that are important to a secondary source (boss, teacher, coworker, partner).

Rewards & consequences.
Tasks that result in rewards or have negative consequences if you fail to do them.

“