Is this ADHD?

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I'm on the computer right now, in my "happy place" which involves opening 5 or 6 browser tabs, going back and forth between different information in each one of them. Each only seems to keep my attention for 5 minutes or less until I have to switch back to a different tab. They all generally revolve around my special interest, but different aspects of it. I was just thinking to myself that I would probably be a little more useful if I could focus on one aspect of my special interest for more than a few minutes at a time, and the words "attention deficit" floated into my head. of course, I'm about to open a tab and do some [brief] research on that now, and revisit it every 20 minutes or so until I have some kind of an idea of what it means, but I figured I'd ask you guys first.

Anyway, is this an ADHD thing? Or is it just AS? Or....what? I would really like to be able to focus on one thing for an extended period of time.

Thanks!

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the ability to focus intensely on one subject (say, a special interest) for long periods of time is one of the hallmarks of AS.

It could be either ASD or both ASD and ADHD.

Both people with ASD or ADHD have trouble with attention regulation--someone with an ASD will mostly hyperfocus, someone with ADHD will mostly not really be able to focus, but either disability can cause hyperfocus or inability to focus. And yes, you can have both!

Why does it matter if you have it or not?

I don't think that's a symptom of ADHD. In fact I'm unusual compared to other people I know in my mono-track thinking...I usually have two tabs open.....one playing my music and the other on this forum or researching or whatever I'm doing and I usually do the same thing for hours at a time (I have trouble switching to another thing actually-I switch from computer to reading at night-reading is the last thing I do before I sleep). Now I do have diagnoses of AS and ADHD and I'm not saying you don't have either or both but that isn't a symptom......that is what my entirely NT sister and my NT friend do(you could be an aspie and do it too....but it's not a symptom). In case you're curious, some ways that ADHD affects me on a daily basis are things like often losing my possessions, important ones too, like cell phones and Ipods, starting to do something like cook and being interrupted by my mom calling me away to talk to me and then forgetting that I was ever cooking to begin with with the reulst of burnt food,, being unable to multi-task- unable to effectively do more than one thing at once, as soon as there's an interruption in my routine I'll forget simple everyday important things like taking my medication, or I'll get really absorbed in reading which do at night and forget to eat (that might also be AS related though) and I'm really disorganized.

I'm an overlapper, I do a brick-and-mortar version of OP's 5 browser tabs. I wouldn't consider my happy place but almost daily I have 5 or 6 projects out in front of me and I will spend 5 minutes working on one, maybe 20 minutes on another one, have a few guzzles of soda, then few minutes on something else. When I am faced with a single project that has numerous steps I MUST break it up somehow otherwise I start spacing out and going over areas I've already addressed and if I feel pressured for time I begin to omit crucial elements, so I find it helps if I clear my mind before engaging in precise maneuvers. The ADHD side probably isn't so concerned with nailing it

I have 9 tabs open at the moment as well as VB.Net and Music playing I don't think that matters to much. The time spent on each, I feel, does. While I flick about my interests at a heart beat when I am addicted to one then the focus on this one interest does not falter until something else takes it place. An example of this is I can be happily watching Anime for hours a day and suddenly I can't watch it any more and I am suddenly addicted to Programming or Reading.

As for you question I find it confusing. You have not mentioned two subjects for it to be both. If you mean ASD and ADHD I cannot answer though as I have only researched Aspergers fully as I fell that's what I am affected by

It could be ADHD. I remember one job that I was the only person that worked there and it was a cell phone store. I would clean a part of the store, start cleaning another part, move on to another part, then come back to the first one. lol

Thanks everyone! I was mostly just wondering if that was some obviously "ADHD" thing to do. The truth is, I'm 99% positive that I have AS, and I am seeing a specialist who I believe is about to diagnose me officially. I was just wondering if I could also have ADHD. While I think there's a possibility, I'm not overly concerned with it at the moment.

I think that most likely the reason that I like to flip back an forth between so many tabs is that I think so rapidly about my special interest that I keep googling my thoughts and getting side tracked with new and interesting snippets of information. Sometimes I'll get side tracked from the snippet, and before I know it I have a bunch of related tabs of information open and I probably feel like I want to read them all at once haha.

I have seven tabs open now and I've barely started the day. I suppose that happens when you go to bed at 2am after being online on your iPad in bed all night. Yesterday I got up to 15. I know some people with ADHD that have up to 20-40. They must have a very slow computer, or maybe a very fast one...

It's not really ADHD what you're doing. It could be. But people with ADHD lose interest on thing and jump to another. It's usually two very distinct interests. Or 5. Or 70.

You have to fit more symptoms of ADHD to have it, and they must be impairing.

I was going to say something else but forgot, ha.

Oh yeah, you can both AS and ADHD, but please don't say you have ADHD if it barely affects you. I'm already struggling through this morning without medication.