I have noticed that much of the way I learn doesn’t begin with an answer. It begins with noticing something.
Something works. Something doesn’t. Something feels unnecessarily difficult. I react differently from how I expected. Sometimes I don’t understand why at all.
I just notice it.
Understanding can come later.
Years ago, I bought a ring in Marrakech with a part that rotated. It wasn’t particularly significant at the time, but I found myself turning it during some very difficult situations. Concentrating on that small physical movement helped me.
I knew it worked.
I didn’t know why.
Years later, after being diagnosed with AuDHD, my therapist recommended that I try a fidget ring. I immediately recognised what she was describing because, without knowing it, I had already discovered something similar for myself.
The new information didn’t change what happened years ago. It gave me another way of understanding it.
That distinction matters to me.
Retrospect can reinterpret the evidence. It shouldn’t rewrite the facts.
It would be very easy to look backwards through my life with everything I know now and attribute every behaviour, decision or difficulty to AuDHD. That wouldn’t necessarily make it true.
What I can do is look again.
An observation made years ago can acquire new context today without needing to become a different memory.
Understanding is useful when I can do something with it
Once I understand something a little better, I can try something.
Sometimes that’s a deliberate change. Sometimes it’s simply continuing to use something that I now understand works for me.
It doesn’t need to become a grand strategy.
If something creates unnecessary friction, I can change it. If an environment isn’t working for me, I can adapt it. If I’ve discovered a tool that helps, I can use it.
That is implementation.
But implementation isn’t proof that I’ve understood something correctly.
I still have to see what happens.
Reality gets another vote
I can think something through beautifully and still be wrong.
I can create what appears to be the perfect solution and discover that it doesn’t work when it encounters actual life.
Equally, something I try almost accidentally can work extremely well.
So after implementation comes observation again.
Did it work?
Did it partly work?
Did solving one problem expose another?
Did something happen that I hadn’t considered?
Even failure can be useful because it has produced new information. The next attempt doesn’t begin from the same place as the first.
The process I’ve recognised looks something like this:
Observation → Understanding → Implementation → Observation
The second observation isn’t a return to the beginning. It contains everything I’ve learned along the way.
Then the process can start again.
There isn’t a finished version
I don’t think understanding is a destination.
Every time I implement something I’ve learned, I change something, however slightly. That change creates another experience. That experience gives me something else to observe.
Sometimes the cycle happens in minutes.
Sometimes understanding arrives years after the original observation.
Either way, I don’t need to force the answer.
I can observe. Understand a little more. Try something.
Then pay attention to what actually happens.