Preface: I'm not taking adderall, I'm prescribed a different stimulant (called Vyvanse in the US I believe), but I'm assuming the effects should be broadly similar.
I've been taking this for just over two months now. I've had my dosage increased twice, and each time I've noticed small improvements. More quality-of-life things rather than major changes, but as we haven't settled on a steady dosage, this may change in the future.
The kind of improvements I have noticed so far:
- My thinking is more joined up. Example: I cleared all the crap out of my car so it would be empty for helping a friend move furniture. And as I finished doing it, I thought, "Why don't I vacuum the interior while it's empty?" That kind of natural next step just wouldn't have occurred to me before, and then I did it, rather than just thinking about doing it. (thus far the 'actually doing' has only been for minor things, but still!)
- I have more patience with music. I am known amongst my circle of friends as someone who is constantly skipping songs on Spotify playlists - songs I have added as favourites, sometimes 15-20 before settling on one, then skipping that once halfway through. I'm no longer doing this anywhere near as much, and it's really nice to just be able to listen without getting impatient.
- When I'm doing work, I can ignore little distractions. Things like an arriving email, or a Teams message - previously I could not ignore the little flashing notification, I would have to go and read it, then likely get further distracted, only returning to my work maybe 5-10 minutes later and then being distracted again by the next one. Now, I feel able to wait until I reach a natural pause in what I'm doing, the notification isn't as urgent-seeming.
As said, none of these are individually life-changing, but they are definite improvements for me, things that I didn't notice until I'd been taking the meds for a few weeks and was thinking back about whether anything had changed.
I hope this helps with some suggestions of the kind of improvements that you might see as you work towards finding the right dosage, even if they're not the big 'I have a working executive function!!!' kind of changes, every little helps.