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I've tried Adderall, Ritalin, etc, and sometimes I'm able to concentrate on the things I need to get done, but unless I'm really careful about saying focused I

• itmag 15y ago
  "Experimenting with crazy metaprogramming techniques, writing over-engineered utility libraries, experimenting with new technologies, writing epic blog posts, etc. That said, I've learned a lot about programming by going off on those tangents." Sounds like fun to me. But maybe the focus you needed was more in the TPS genre? :)
• MichaelGG 15y ago
  Yep - stimulants will give you amazing focus, but you need to make sure that focus is trained on the right thing first. It's best to take them after you're more-or-less on track, or at least committed to a plan. If you just take them while going through a "morning routine" and haven't decided what you're going to be doing, you can easily burn a day on tangents. (As a third party, you can notice this behaviour in others if those folks are prone to calling you with all sorts of great ideas and things they're going to do today, but by the evening, they're discussing how to improve TLB cache hit ratios for their Ruby-on-Rails app.) But if you get on track, wow, stimulants can make an amazing amount of difference. They're great for getting a large amount of work done, as well as dealing with complex problems.