4 ms·

I got diagnosed a year ago after not knowing I had it my whole life, and I can definitely confirm this. I take Adderall, and the way I describe it to people is

by mkaic 3y ago

I got diagnosed a year ago after not knowing I had it my whole life, and I can definitely confirm this. I take Adderall, and the way I describe it to people is that while it definitely helps me focus, it doesn't make it any easier for me to choose what I focus on. So heck yeah, sometimes it's super useful and helps me stay on task at work! Other times, I spend 5 hours diving extremely deep into research papers from fields I have no experience in and end up learning a ton of really cool stuff that is not at all relevant to my day job whatsoever. I have not yet figured out a way to control which scenario occurs on any given day.

naasking 3y ago
> I have not yet figured out a way to control which scenario occurs on any given day. One tip I heard that seems to work pretty consistently: leave some work unfinished at the end of the day. Whatever you're working on at the end of the day, leave the last one or two tasks almost finished, as in, leave only a few minutes of work left. Say writing some comments to document code, writing a detailed commit message of what you're working on, maybe renaming the functions or variables to something more meaningful before you commit, etc. The next day you can easily convince yourself, "well I might as well take a minute or two to finish off these one or two trivial things", and now you're in "focused on work" mode and that's often enough momentum to keep going.
- bick_nyers 3y ago
  For me I either forget, or stop caring if I try that. If you want to get a project from 0% to 90% I'm your guy. 90% to 100%? Brutal.
  - naasking 3y ago
    > For me I either forget, or stop caring if I try that. This is a tactic in addition to some usual means of tracking tasks, like a TODO list.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
> Other times, I spend 5 hours diving extremely deep into research papers from fields I have no experience in and end up learning a ton of really cool stuff that is not at all relevant to my day job whatsoever. Me too. In the last year or so I’ve been crazy about hydrology, climate, and nutrition. I can’t really do anything with any of what I learn, but I love learning more. But my diet is fine, I don’t do anything with hydrology, the climate is well beyond my sphere of control. What the hell am I doing? I’m glad (kind of) that I’m not alone.

by mkaic 3y ago

naasking 3y ago

> I have not yet figured out a way to control which scenario occurs on any given day. One tip I heard that seems to work pretty consistently: leave some work unfinished at the end of the day. Whatever you're working on at the end of the day, leave the last one or two tasks almost finished, as in, leave only a few minutes of work left. Say writing some comments to document code, writing a detailed commit message of what you're working on, maybe renaming the functions or variables to something more meaningful before you commit, etc. The next day you can easily convince yourself, "well I might as well take a minute or two to finish off these one or two trivial things", and now you're in "focused on work" mode and that's often enough momentum to keep going.

bick_nyers 3y ago
For me I either forget, or stop caring if I try that. If you want to get a project from 0% to 90% I'm your guy. 90% to 100%? Brutal.
- naasking 3y ago
  > For me I either forget, or stop caring if I try that. This is a tactic in addition to some usual means of tracking tasks, like a TODO list.

steve_adams_86 3y ago

> Other times, I spend 5 hours diving extremely deep into research papers from fields I have no experience in and end up learning a ton of really cool stuff that is not at all relevant to my day job whatsoever. Me too. In the last year or so I’ve been crazy about hydrology, climate, and nutrition. I can’t really do anything with any of what I learn, but I love learning more. But my diet is fine, I don’t do anything with hydrology, the climate is well beyond my sphere of control. What the hell am I doing? I’m glad (kind of) that I’m not alone.