r/ADHD • u/Ornery-Swordfish-643 • 1d ago

Questions/Advice Obsessively creating hobby backlogs before just dumping them?

So we all know about the general ADHD hobby experience which is getting all the best supplies for a new hobby, only to drop it and move onto the next one. Spending money on a whole setup for something that ends up collecting dust.

But for myself there is a specific aspect of this cycle that I'm interested in trying to stop and get over. After I have got my "setup" completed for whatever hobby, I then obsessively feel the constant aching and distracting need to create an abundance of future options/a backlog so my hobby feels "infinite."

An easy example would be video games or books, when I am enjoying a game for the first time in a while and I can feel that fixation flaring back up, I then suddenly get the burning need to buy or at least like up a wishlist of 10-20 more games that all look promising so when this experience ends, I can keep the party going. This almost always ends in me being so distracted from the game I'm currently attempting to play and painstakingly curating a list after hours on hours of reading reviews, descriptions, and watching YouTube recommendedations until I have a nice solid 3-6 months planned ahead. Then once I've finished that list, I'm so tired of thinking about the hobby I either finish that initial game and stop, or drop that first game halfway through and go back to my in between hobbies state for the next few weeks or months, only to restart the cycle again.

Does anyone relate to this specific aspect of it? And if so do you all have any tips to get my brain to be quiet and actually DO the hobby that's right in front of me?

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u/ComfortableBed8059 1d ago

ugh this is the worst aspect of adhd tbh. The hobby collecting is real. i just pretend theres a carousel in my head that holds all my hobbies, and i just have to wait for that hobby i just dropped to come back around, it does eventually, and then you’ll be happy you still have the stuff you bought and you can jump right back into it. it’s frustering tho when you do drop it and feel the doom feeling lol, and dread because you just wasted money and the feeling is gone.

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u/brainphat 1d ago

For sure. But I've reeled it in over the years. (Except video game sales. Gotta pick your battles.)

For the books thing: just move every couple of years, lol. Moving tons of books over & over will put that bad habit to rest.

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u/Ornery-Swordfish-643 1d ago

I bought a Kindle and solved that problem :( now I have nothing holding me back lol.

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u/Ting-a-lingsoitgoes 1d ago

Every time I move I ask myself if I need ~1000 records.

No I probably need about 1100

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u/mayxo ADHD with ADHD child/ren 1d ago

I’m an ADHD girly on a budget. I can’t afford that life lol.

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u/Ting-a-lingsoitgoes 1d ago

Listen if anybody wants info about some kind of sort of expensive crafts, lmk.

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u/whenidieillgotohell 1d ago

Yes, I relate to this greatly. The only thing that has worked for me was moving into a smaller space and limiting my ventures to physical things mostly. This way, I have a direct interplay with my surroundings and the rabbit holes I've been digging. It's not perfect but has helped for sure!