5 ms·

I went in an ADHD rabbit hole a week ago. I never considered my self suffering from it, my quirks were individual parts of my character! But now I highly susp

by k__ 4y ago

I went in an ADHD rabbit hole a week ago. I never considered my self suffering from it, my quirks were individual parts of my character! But now I highly suspect I have it. I lose focus all the time. For example, Going from doing laundry, to gathering dishes, and bringing out trash without finishing one of them. Or I can't read long articles with topics that are important for me but don't tickle one of my interests. I've started reading countless books for only 20-30 pages. Also, it feels impossible to plan for/estimate longer time periods and I'm constantly bouncing my knee or stimm in another way. I started freelancing because I couldn't get to work at the same time every day and even now I just work 5-10h a week, because my lack of motivation for repeating tasks. I thought, well it's biological, I can't have it, my relatives are all normal... But wait, my mother did impulse purchases all the time, was switching jobs constantly and even retired with 50, because of that. Whelp, guess I should get a psychiatrist soon...

llamaLord 4y ago
In my experience, companies that have ADHD founders or CEO's tend to have an unconscious bias towards hiring other people with neurodivergant traits. We think differently, and tend to value others with similar "differences". The trick is avoiding an ADHD/Aspie monoculture. You need some people around to do the important, but less shiny stuff.
waboremo 4y ago
Haha, freelancing ADHD is a classic! We seek being our own boss so we don't have to be forced to do what we cannot, only to then intensely struggle completing tasks we know we are capable of due to executive dysfunction, and then feel so much shame and guilt over a struggling freelance business leading to even more restlessness! Anyways definitely seek a specialist, there are many options and even if it's not ADHD they've got access to a lot of really great resources to cope with what you do struggle with.
- k__ 4y ago
  I'm not struggling, yet, but, when I think what I could do with more than 5h of work a week, I get sad.
bcoughlan 4y ago
> Or I can't read long articles with topics that are important for me but don't tickle one of my interests. Can't concentrate on boring things - surely that's normal? It feels like they're casting the ADHD net wider and wider and from reading the internet I'm starting to question whether my behavior fits into the ADHD category. And part of me wants it to so that I have a label that explains and excuses me. But how do you separate it from this boring hyper-specialized world of bullshit jobs? As someone said it's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society. I love Doug Stanhope's take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKyMvjPJdtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKyMvjPJdtM
- Jensson 4y ago
  > Can't concentrate on boring things - surely that's normal? Normal people can concentrate if you pay them money to concentrate. ADHD people can't concentrate with such incentives, they are people who require intrinsic motivation to concentrate and money/other rewards aren't enough.
- alwillis 4y ago
  > Can't concentrate on boring things - surely that's normal? Neurotypical people can get stuff done even if it's of no interest to them or if they find it boring because it has to get done regardless. I've certainly had the experience of assigning something to an intern or trainee that's super boring and they just knock it out, even though they could care less about the subject of task itself. People with ADHD have lots of difficulty with tasks or subjects that are not of interest to them, which leads to procrastination. They often wait until the last minute (often it's those people who say "I'm good under pressure"); if the consequences are serious enough, that causes them to focus on getting the task done. Pulling an all-nighter to get that report done doesn't scale and it means something else important isn't being attended to. Dr. Andrew Huberman (Stanford neuroscientist) has an excellent podcast about ADHD [1]. [1]: https://hubermanlab.com/adhd-and-how-anyone-can-improve-their-focus/ https://hubermanlab.com/adhd-and-how-anyone-can-improve-thei...
  - seba_dos1 4y ago
    > Pulling an all-nighter to get that report done doesn't scale It not only doesn't scale - you develop a resistance. Because you managed to pull it off with that all-nighter, next time you won't leave it for the last 12 hours, but the last 8 hours instead. If you still manage to do it, then next time you won't be able to get to it until it's 6 hours till the deadline. And at some point you start to fail. At the beginning it's not a big deal, as you were always delivering and everybody fails sometimes - but that only makes you even more resistant and eventually, it becomes the norm. You fail hard. Of course this is simplified a lot - it's not "next time", it may happen over the course of several years, get better and worse periodically, etc. But that's the trend anyway.
ravenstine 4y ago
I suspect a lot of ADHD people become programmers because software can compliment the countless fleeting interests we have. That said, programming as a career is still more challenging to us because non-ADHD programmers are more likely to succeed with numerous responsibilities and more complex and boring tasks. The more an ADHD programmer advances, the fewer of his immediate peers will have ADHD. This is one of the reasons why I will refuse a job title that is greater than senior engineer. I know in my heart of hearts that being a staff or lead engineer will be bad for everyone. I'm not even particularly stellar as a senior engineer, but I can at least sustain it. Reaching this point can be astonishing to the undiagnosed ADHD programmer. For the first handful of years into their career, their shortcomings were either dismissed as inexperience or covered for by coping mechanisms. In my experience, the coping mechanisms start to buckle once you're a senior level programmer. Get a diagnosis ASAP if you suspect you have ADHD. Medication and other things can definitely help. I also think there's nothing wrong in figuring out just how much mental capacity you have to give to your job and not exceeding it, even if that means rejecting prestige.
- k__ 4y ago
  Thanks. Yes, I'm rejecting well paying jobs constantly because I couldn't bear to be employed and working 40h a week again.
- swozey 4y ago
  My problem with programming (of which I've been trying to really do decent at for years but failing) + ADHD is my memory is absolutely trash. I'll spend a week or two working on an app and then put it down for a month and it takes me a day just to get rolling with it again because I basically learn/work by brute forcing things to work as opposed to remembering concepts that would make it work without having to do so. It's frustrating and makes me often give up. I work in Ops, so it's not a day to day thing for me to write any code. Thankfully with all of the fires and different things to work on in Ops I think it's a very good fit for an ADHD person.
  - k__ 4y ago
    Tooling helped a bit. Debuggers or things like Sentry and Honeycomb. Basically everything that gives me runtime insights to the software. Using static types and tests to ensure every dumb change I make gets caught somewhere.
aatd86 4y ago
Out of curiosity, do you have intrusive thoughts? Or if you think about your thoughts calmly, at a distance, what pops up? When you try to imagine let's say a chess board and the pieces on it, does it look clear to you? Or do you have difficulties controlling your internal visualization? (if anyone also with ADHD wants to answer, feel free)
- k__ 4y ago
  I have intrusive thoughts. When I try to phantasize something to calm myself down for sleep, I often end up thinking about something embarrassing or hurtful from the past. I can't control it, it just happens and when I notice it, I alread ruminates some time about it and don't know how I got there. But besides that, I don't have problems to visualize things in my mind. I just have to do it consciously, most of the time I think in concepts.
- cyanf 4y ago
  For me, the visualization of the board is amorphous and unstable. It also resets about every so often. However, I’m not sure if this is an experience exclusive to ADHD.

by k__ 4y ago

llamaLord 4y ago

In my experience, companies that have ADHD founders or CEO's tend to have an unconscious bias towards hiring other people with neurodivergant traits. We think differently, and tend to value others with similar "differences". The trick is avoiding an ADHD/Aspie monoculture. You need some people around to do the important, but less shiny stuff.

waboremo 4y ago

Haha, freelancing ADHD is a classic! We seek being our own boss so we don't have to be forced to do what we cannot, only to then intensely struggle completing tasks we know we are capable of due to executive dysfunction, and then feel so much shame and guilt over a struggling freelance business leading to even more restlessness! Anyways definitely seek a specialist, there are many options and even if it's not ADHD they've got access to a lot of really great resources to cope with what you do struggle with.

k__ 4y ago
I'm not struggling, yet, but, when I think what I could do with more than 5h of work a week, I get sad.

bcoughlan 4y ago

> Or I can't read long articles with topics that are important for me but don't tickle one of my interests. Can't concentrate on boring things - surely that's normal? It feels like they're casting the ADHD net wider and wider and from reading the internet I'm starting to question whether my behavior fits into the ADHD category. And part of me wants it to so that I have a label that explains and excuses me. But how do you separate it from this boring hyper-specialized world of bullshit jobs? As someone said it's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society. I love Doug Stanhope's take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKyMvjPJdtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKyMvjPJdtM

Jensson 4y ago
> Can't concentrate on boring things - surely that's normal? Normal people can concentrate if you pay them money to concentrate. ADHD people can't concentrate with such incentives, they are people who require intrinsic motivation to concentrate and money/other rewards aren't enough.
alwillis 4y ago
> Can't concentrate on boring things - surely that's normal? Neurotypical people can get stuff done even if it's of no interest to them or if they find it boring because it has to get done regardless. I've certainly had the experience of assigning something to an intern or trainee that's super boring and they just knock it out, even though they could care less about the subject of task itself. People with ADHD have lots of difficulty with tasks or subjects that are not of interest to them, which leads to procrastination. They often wait until the last minute (often it's those people who say "I'm good under pressure"); if the consequences are serious enough, that causes them to focus on getting the task done. Pulling an all-nighter to get that report done doesn't scale and it means something else important isn't being attended to. Dr. Andrew Huberman (Stanford neuroscientist) has an excellent podcast about ADHD [1]. [1]: https://hubermanlab.com/adhd-and-how-anyone-can-improve-their-focus/ https://hubermanlab.com/adhd-and-how-anyone-can-improve-thei...
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  > Pulling an all-nighter to get that report done doesn't scale It not only doesn't scale - you develop a resistance. Because you managed to pull it off with that all-nighter, next time you won't leave it for the last 12 hours, but the last 8 hours instead. If you still manage to do it, then next time you won't be able to get to it until it's 6 hours till the deadline. And at some point you start to fail. At the beginning it's not a big deal, as you were always delivering and everybody fails sometimes - but that only makes you even more resistant and eventually, it becomes the norm. You fail hard. Of course this is simplified a lot - it's not "next time", it may happen over the course of several years, get better and worse periodically, etc. But that's the trend anyway.

ravenstine 4y ago

I suspect a lot of ADHD people become programmers because software can compliment the countless fleeting interests we have. That said, programming as a career is still more challenging to us because non-ADHD programmers are more likely to succeed with numerous responsibilities and more complex and boring tasks. The more an ADHD programmer advances, the fewer of his immediate peers will have ADHD. This is one of the reasons why I will refuse a job title that is greater than senior engineer. I know in my heart of hearts that being a staff or lead engineer will be bad for everyone. I'm not even particularly stellar as a senior engineer, but I can at least sustain it. Reaching this point can be astonishing to the undiagnosed ADHD programmer. For the first handful of years into their career, their shortcomings were either dismissed as inexperience or covered for by coping mechanisms. In my experience, the coping mechanisms start to buckle once you're a senior level programmer. Get a diagnosis ASAP if you suspect you have ADHD. Medication and other things can definitely help. I also think there's nothing wrong in figuring out just how much mental capacity you have to give to your job and not exceeding it, even if that means rejecting prestige.

k__ 4y ago
Thanks. Yes, I'm rejecting well paying jobs constantly because I couldn't bear to be employed and working 40h a week again.
swozey 4y ago
My problem with programming (of which I've been trying to really do decent at for years but failing) + ADHD is my memory is absolutely trash. I'll spend a week or two working on an app and then put it down for a month and it takes me a day just to get rolling with it again because I basically learn/work by brute forcing things to work as opposed to remembering concepts that would make it work without having to do so. It's frustrating and makes me often give up. I work in Ops, so it's not a day to day thing for me to write any code. Thankfully with all of the fires and different things to work on in Ops I think it's a very good fit for an ADHD person.
- k__ 4y ago
  Tooling helped a bit. Debuggers or things like Sentry and Honeycomb. Basically everything that gives me runtime insights to the software. Using static types and tests to ensure every dumb change I make gets caught somewhere.

aatd86 4y ago

Out of curiosity, do you have intrusive thoughts? Or if you think about your thoughts calmly, at a distance, what pops up? When you try to imagine let's say a chess board and the pieces on it, does it look clear to you? Or do you have difficulties controlling your internal visualization? (if anyone also with ADHD wants to answer, feel free)

k__ 4y ago
I have intrusive thoughts. When I try to phantasize something to calm myself down for sleep, I often end up thinking about something embarrassing or hurtful from the past. I can't control it, it just happens and when I notice it, I alread ruminates some time about it and don't know how I got there. But besides that, I don't have problems to visualize things in my mind. I just have to do it consciously, most of the time I think in concepts.
cyanf 4y ago
For me, the visualization of the board is amorphous and unstable. It also resets about every so often. However, I’m not sure if this is an experience exclusive to ADHD.