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This hits home. I think we need to really take a hard look at today's world of tech and how we communicate and collaborate. I find that, if time allows, I get

by keyle 3y ago

This hits home. I think we need to really take a hard look at today's world of tech and how we communicate and collaborate. I find that, if time allows, I get a massive productivity boost after 4:30pm and everyone is either winding down or leaving. All the sudden, the walls flatten, the horizon deepens and I enter a deep state of flow. Around 10 AM, after an elongated "stand up", I should be ready to go... And yet it's absolutely impossible to not alt-tab 300 times per hour, and I can't seem to even remember the code I just typed or what the hell I'm even trying to do. Even if I close Slack, Outlook and turn off all notifications, I've got a minute-by-minute cron job in the back of my head that ticks "Hey! One minute has passed. The world could be on fire! Is it?"... I remember once I had to travel for family, to a different timezone, I was super productive. Only 1 14" screen and a different timezone. Pedal to the metal. Ah, the 90s. The CRT, the keyboard, the fullscreen applications, the lack of communication. 1 or 2 emails a day. Bliss. Add to today: kids, imessages, facebook, twitter, mastodon, instagram, emails, slack, discord... How the fuck do I even survive the week? I think ADHD is the new norm.

Apocryphon 3y ago
I’m sure 90s workplaces were relatively better, but bliss? That was the heyday of Dilbert, Office Space, Fight Club, American Beauty, and The Matrix.
FullKirby 3y ago
Being distracted (even a lot) and actually having ADHD are very different things
- muhblah 3y ago
  Thanks, also had this discussion with a colleague (obviously not having ADHD) who thought he understands what I’m (having ADHD diagnosed) talking about and I argue he does not. I then almost started to doubt my own perception abilities InsertHugeFacepalmHere
  - swozey 3y ago
    If you ever forget or wonder if you have ADHD vs being inattentive, just look back at its affects on your romantic relationships and how much it damaged them or made them more difficult. How often a partner probably told you that they felt neglected or forgotten, or how often you'd wind up in a rabbit hole and forget that you also have to nourish that relationship.
    - muhblah 3y ago
      Totally agree. I stopped counting long time ago.
    - _4pjx 3y ago
      Oof. This hits close to home. I have ADHD and my partner recently ended a four-year relationship for several reasons but feeling neglected and like she had to fight to get my attention was one of them. We didn't consciously realize this was a major problem until it was too late. And now reading this thread I'm realizing wow yeah I really wasn't doing a good job of paying attention to her and her needs even though I cared a lot about her, now this is something to be aware of and put effort into changing in my next relationship.
      - swozey 3y ago
        It's something that I unfortunately didn't put 2+2 together until my 30s after ruining quite a few and always wondering why I would be so enamored with someone and they never felt like I was giving them enough. And my most recent ex was anxious attached. That was rough. I'm far more on the avoidant side, not sure how much of that is upbringing vs adhd. There's a bunch of books about marriage/relationships with ADHD people. I haven't read any but I should. The lady in this video has written a bunch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pyAfOPGKlI&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pyAfOPGKlI&t=1s
- atcalan 3y ago
  This!!! ADHD is unfortunately named based on misunderstanding of the prefrontal cortex. It is executive function disorder. Similar behaviors occur from prefrontal cortex trauma. Barkley notes that ADHD stays so named because it is tied legally to entitlements.
conception 3y ago
If you haven’t tried any sort of mindfulness/meditation program, I’d recommend one. I like Ten Percent Happier and enjoyed the app and its content (not affiliated in any way). Being able to think about nothing is a skill/habit/muscle that needs to be learned and practiced. My mind still can churn but at least now I have the tools and some ability to tell it “not now” and quiet it some. It’s been pretty dramatic, especially in being able to fall asleep quicker.
- jimmydddd 3y ago
  Agreed. I like the vibe of Ten Percent Happier which is kind of like "Yeah, I thought this meditation stuff was bogus, but, for some reason it helps. No, it won't solve all of your problems, but it does seem to make things 10 percent better. And don't even think about saying 'Namaste.'" :-)
- keyle 3y ago
  I will try this, thanks!
- atcalan 3y ago
  Unfortunately genuine ADHD is a physiological problem that requires stimulant therapy _and_ cognitive behavior therapy in conjunction. Your dopamine and/or acetylcholine receptors are out of whack. This is why coffee and cigarettes/vapes are so prevalent. Methylphenidate or dexamphetamine work best but you pay a price. Yes, I have real world executive function research lab experience, so I know a bit of what I'm talking about. You need a good neurologist.
  - collegeburner 3y ago
    Maybe you can provide some perspective here: it seems almost universal that people who start these medications never find a dose that provides durable benefit over the long term. Makes sense; we acclimate to a new dopamine baseline, right? Almost everyone I know ends up on a significantly higher dose than they started with. And the stories of feeling like a zombie when off meds are very real and pretty freaky.
Eumenes 3y ago
> Add to today: kids, imessages, facebook, twitter, mastodon, instagram, emails, slack, discord... How the fuck do I even survive the week? uh, perhaps by not using all of those things? sounds like you're uber distracted
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  Kids: not even once. Seriously, though, there might be external factors at play; different social circles might use these things and abandoning the apps could be the same as abandoning the groups.
  - aidos 3y ago
    You’re at work. Sure, there’s Slack - but dial the notifications down as much as you can. Almost none of us need access to social tools in that time. If you can’t help yourself then do what developers do and use tech to stop you reaching for those things.
Teridee 3y ago
At my company, we have daily standups and they throw off my whole morning. I only really work effectively when I am left to it and so have outlook/slack/messages turned off during periods where I am trying to focus - has got me in trouble with management a few times but I am not sure what else i can do. The piece was a good read but its so personal to me that it doesn't really help sadly.
- cottage-cheese 3y ago
  > has got me in trouble with management a few times but I am not sure what else i can do Don't worry about it. I think this is good advice for any software engineer. Eventually you'll be senior enough or on a different team and it won't be a problem.
  - throwoutway 3y ago
    Agreed, I'd add to give your manager your phone number for emergencies and tell them you've allow-listed their number to ring when others can't. Then get back to flow
    - TremendousJudge 3y ago
      That sounds like a terrible idea to me, I'd never want to do that. If they like the work I do, management should learn to respect the way I do it.
      - dannyw 3y ago
        Sometimes there are genuine emergencies. If your company got hacked and is all hands on deck, you kinda have to be interrupted. There are situations in which emergencies may not be paged through normal systems.
      - JohnBooty 3y ago
        If you have the kind of clueless/toxic manager who is going to abuse this sort of arrangement, they are probably never going to agree to this sort of arrangement in this first place. For nearly all working relationships, I think it's reasonable to keep an emergency communication channel open.
granra 3y ago
This comment absolutely reads as someone with ADHD telling a story :D
- keyle 3y ago
  I think self-deprecating humour is one and sometimes the only weapon against today. Glad it made you smile!
  - granra 3y ago
    I want to add that I've also been diagnosed with ADHD so I didn't mean anything bad by it :)
PaulWaldman 3y ago
>I find that, if time allows, I get a massive productivity boost after 4:30pm This sounds oddly specific. How consistent is this time? If you start working an hour earlier does it impact the timing of your productivity boost?
- sedivy94 3y ago
  I experience a flow state around that time as well. Mostly because everyone leaves the office. 0630-0730 and 1630-1730 have become my golden hours. Which is weird because body doubling is often an effective tool for me. My true “0430” like the parent comment is really at 2000, but I force myself into a normal sleep schedule and fail often.
  - erosenbe0 3y ago
    Does the time change for you with season and light exposure? I sometimes experience this sort of thing too, where I will have a consistent window of productivity at an unusual time, but it never lasts for a more than a few months.
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    Yeah. My body/brain's natural "mental flow" time is really early mornings. In reality, I generally have too much external distraction around me in the morning to capitalize on this. So my actual productive hours are basically like, "whenever I am reasonably sure that everybody else will leave me the fuck alone for the next few hours." Which often means, "the end of the work day when everybody is signing off for the day."
b33j0r 3y ago
I have been fired while I was off getting more insurance-approved stimulants. You ask us to perform unreasonably tops, then hate us for inventing doordash and shit because: we were smart labor, not cheap.
- atcalan 3y ago
  In the US? EEOC would like to have a word with your employer.
  - b33j0r 3y ago
    I’m too old and arrogant to be litigious. I just try to clear the path for the next generation by equipping them with expectations that match reality closer than I got.
navjack27 3y ago
I think ADHD is the new norm. Huh? ADHD is a debilitating and disabling disorder... I don't think you're talking about ADHD.
- sedivy94 3y ago
  ADHD has little to no physiological markers. As the floor of expectations for attention and executive functioning continues to rise, the rate of diagnosis increases.
  - fao_ 3y ago
    citation needed. ADHD is a deficit in dopamine processing/production within the brain, it has physiological signs that we can look for: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s11689-022-09440-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s11689-022-09440-2
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      DSM-V and ICD? ADHD is diagnosed based on symptoms, not based on physiological signs. Like most diagnoses, it's a co-occurring set of traits we'de decided is outside of what's normal.
      - atcalan 3y ago
        Diagnosis is not the same as underlying physiological cause. The Browns or Vanderbilt assessments are useful for identifying the disorder because the symptoms are stereotypical.
      - InSteady 3y ago
        This is being investigated and may eventually become part of the diagnosis (if you can afford the tests): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1026616/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1026... >In conclusion, a series of biomarkers in the literature are promising as objective parameters to more accurately diagnose ADHD, especially in those with comorbidities that prevent the use of DSM-5. However, more research is needed to confirm the reliability of the biomarkers in larger cohort studies. But yeah, generally there are a lot of conditions where you go report symptoms to your doctor or perhaps a specialist and they prescribe a treatment based on that alone. Testing is mostly used to rule out the really nasty possibilities or figure out what's actually going on when first-line treatments don't work.
pc86 3y ago
Such a minor part of your comment, but I simply cannot focus on anything if my apps aren't all fullscreen. I have two monitors, and two applications visible at any time. Right now I have this on one screen and a non-work YouTube video on the other (Your Mom's House is a great podcast btw, especially if you already have YT premium). I have trouble focusing, I don't think quite to the level of ADHD, but it would be so much worse if I had 4 or 5 apps on each screen.
- rovr138 3y ago
  > I don't think quite to the level of ADHD Or you found coping mechanisms. We all figure out what works for us. Like drinking a ton of coffee or things with caffeine... you're self medicating with your stimulant of choice.
- erosenbe0 3y ago
  That's fairly common. Think back to old school paper workflows or studying for school. Some people can concentrate with 5 books open and papers strewn all over the place. Others can't stand to have but one book open and one sheet of notes.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  You know, it's funny how different we are all when it comes to this. I need all my apps visible in a tiled arrangement. Shuffling windows shatters my flow. I literally cannot have enough screen real estate. My dream is something like a curved 48" 8K monitor filling my entire field of view at 300dpi. (Vision Pro?) I know a lot of people, ADHD and otherwise, like me in this regard. I also know a guy like you, diagnosed with ADHD FWIW, who takes it a little further than you. He needs his apps fullscreened, and can't even do multiple monitors. One screen, one app. I don't know how the f-- he works that way but I'm jealous. He's effective and has no trouble working on a 13" laptop in a coffee shop or whatever.
  - swozey 3y ago
    I had a coworker a few years ago who worked ONLY on his laptop. No monitors. No keyboard. No mouse. He programmed all day on a 13" Macbook Pro. I will never understand it because I absolutely hate having full screen windows and I am almost worthless working off my laptop when traveling. Just lots of frustration juggling windows back and forth. I always have 2 or 3 apps side by side on my 48" and I have a 28" 16:18 DualUp monitor next to it for long text/dev. I didn't work with him so I don't know how productive he actually was but I've always been curious if he kept up with the people who had 2-3 monitors and input devices. I have a hard time believing that he did but no actual idea.
gosub100 3y ago
during covid I was "overemployed" at first 2 jobs, then 3 (which I sustained for over 8 months). Some of it was luck, like not having conflicting meetings, having jobs in different timezones, and the leniency given due to the chaos of the times, but I actually did get work done. But during the average day, I was only there to respond to slack and participate in meetings. I wouldn't really "work" as in write code, until after the sun went down (and I was west-coast working a central time job). I was just a body in a seat until the day was over, then once I knew nobody was available to pester me or expect me to do something, I could crack open the editor and hyperfocus. I also found that getting up super early, I could hyperfocus for an hour or 2 in the AM, then about 9-10am once all the meetings and bs started, I was just an actor. The rest of the time was juggling tasks and procrastinating, and using that energy to drive me to get work done. I would work saturday and sunday mornings (often, not always), but once my focus was lost I would stop. It was a hell of a time, but I learned that (like you) certain times of the day just weren't compatible with getting anything done. I dont think it's correct to say its due to "overstimulation" or caffeine, I think it has to do with brain states, and somehow knowing that I had to be available on slack (or had to make sure my mouse jiggler kept my status green) seemed to be enough to break me away from writing code.
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  Was it worth it to have multiple jobs?
  - gosub100 3y ago
    For me personally, yes. I had gone into debt from gambling and bad financial discipline. OE allowed me to pay off all my debt and put a down payment on a house. Watching "number go down" in rapid fashion was very rewarding, and I wasn't a very active person to begin with so I didn't miss out on as much as a regular person would, being holed up in an apartment for virtually the whole year. But towards the end it had an effect on me, it definitely wasn't sustainable.
muhblah 3y ago
This reflects exactly my day to day struggles. Especially that productivity boost when every one starts leaving, and I _was not able_ to finished the smallest one of my tasks planned for the day 'til then most of the time. I'm writing "was not able" on purpose here, because as someone (being blessed) with ADHD, your brain does not allow you to make progress on the smallest tasks due to all those fireworks being blown around you in your brain. During my part-time studies (I had a 70-80% employment at that time) the time I really started studying productively was after 9-10pm when everyone around me went to finish their day and the world around me started to go silent and night is coming in. Thinking of it today, I don't know how I would have survived that time without the huge support from my wife back then. So all the credits of me being able to complete my studies go to her! Nowadays, I would not know how I would get through the day-to-day work without medication most days. That often worries me a little.
- swader999 3y ago
  Yup, I think all the meds for this can succumb to tolerance. A real life Flowers for Algernon. Over the years I've upped the dose, switched meds, drug holidays but nothing has matched how well my brain worked the first couple of years on meds.
  - muhblah 3y ago
    > nothing has matched how well my brain worked the first couple of years on meds As someone who also has a bit more than 2 decades experience with ADHD medication and started with meds quite early in my teenage years when I went to school, I have very similar experience to yours. One of my assumptions is that it also has a lot to do with the humans metabolism that changes over the years.
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      One of my assumptions is that it also has a lot to do with the humans metabolism that changes over the years. That theory makes sense to me. However, my anecdotal experience is that I never tried any of these meds until my early 30's. The first few weeks on Adderall were f'ing magical. I remember tearing up, I was so happy. Finally I was laser-focused. A bit emotional thinking of it now. The magic faded fast. Adderall was still a large net positive for me for ~6-7 years. But never like those first few weeks. I guess I got somewhat close to that original experience a few times, after extended breaks from Adderall and restarting it. Anyway, this is of course a sample size of 1. But since all the experiences described above took place in my 30s I don't think that metabolism change was a major factor. Certainly not within the first year. Again I know... n=1 =)
swader999 3y ago
I hate having stand-up early am. If you get to work early, there's little motivation to start anything significant just because you'll be soon interrupted. Mid day before lunch is great, you get a sleep period in between two work sessions which often leads to better solutions. Everyone wants to go to lunch so the meeting moves at a quick pace, you have lunch time to decompress and absorb it. There's a morning block and afternoon block for uninterrupted deep work. It gives people a flexible arrive time in the morning, they aren't struggling to make it in for the meeting.
albert_e 3y ago
> 1 or 2 emails a day. Bliss. Just reading that made me feel the presence of 'bliss' :)
Aurornis 3y ago
> I remember once I had to travel for family, to a different timezone, I was super productive. Only 1 14" screen and a different timezone. Pedal to the metal. I think the pop-culture definition of ADHD has shifted a lot. In the past, being able to focus well (as you described in a different environment) would have been a sign that the issue was more environmental in nature, not a sign of clinical ADHD. Patients with ADHD struggled everywhere, even in distraction-free environments like a quiet library or quiet test taking environment. Now, the pop-culture understanding of ADHD has shifted so far that we don’t bat an eye at declaring ADHD even when someone is operating under a constant barrage of environmental distractions. To be clear, someone with ADHD will have an even harder time resisting impulses to seek out distractions, but the fact that someone can focus just fine when their environment is minimally structured to keep distractions at a reasonable level would suggest that person doesn’t have classic ADHD. > I think ADHD is the new norm. I think this is my problem with the current pop-culture definition of ADHD: When the definition shifts so much that it becomes the “norm”, we’ve lost the plot. Something isn’t really a disorder if it’s “the norm”. There’s a secondary problem I’ve been noticing in a subset of the young people I’ve worked with: Some of them self-diagnose with ADHD or get a doctor’s diagnosis, then mistakenly think that their ADHD diagnosis is an excuse for everything. I’ve had far too many conversations where I had to gently explain to juniors (via a volunteer mentor program, not as their boss) that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn’t mean that deadlines don’t apply them, or that they get a free pass for being late to meetings, or that they’re still obligated to perform at the level of their peers at work. Some of them have grown up in an environment where ADHD students get extra time to take tests, which some of them assume should translate to more forgiving expectations at work. It’s difficult to get some of them to accept that having ADHD means they need more accountability and oversight, not less. I think we’re making a huge mistake by normalizing ADHD to the point that people think it’s the norm or that everyone has it because they surround themselves with distractions. Anecdotally, I’ve seen too many young people self-diagnose with ADHD and then actually spend less effort to curtail distractions, train their focus, and work on self-improvement. There’s something about becoming convinced that your behaviors are a medical condition that is out of your control (many erroneously declare they have a “dopamine deficiency” or similar misunderstandings of the science) that can give people a false sense that they either can’t improve their situation or that they shouldn’t be held responsible because it’s a labeled medical condition. I don’t know where we go from here, but I can say it’s been an uphill battle to get recent mentoring cohorts to accept that attention is something they can improve with practice or even that they need to do things like silence phone notifications while they work. I’m often stunned when I screen share with someone who has a non-stop stream of unimportant notifications in the top right corner, who later laments that they just can’t focus on anything for someone.
cottage-cheese 3y ago
> I think ADHD is the new norm. Maybe selection bias, but a significant number of my friends are diagnosed.
- atcalan 3y ago
  5% of the population have the disorder. Self selection may be causing you to see it as very prevalent.
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    I think that may be true. I also think it's true that many professions will aggressively surface ADHD. Imagine a plumber making house calls all day. There's a fair bit of structure and variety baked into his day, he's moving around, gets to use his hands, etc. It's hard and skilled work but it also might be really compatible with ADHD. Now think of a software engineer. 8-10 hours of monofocus on a single task every day. It's just you and the computer... which also has the largest array of distractions (the internet) just a click away. Fucking nightmare scenario for ADHD. If you've got even a hint of ADHD this career will expose it and expose it hard.
    - plugin-baby 3y ago
      I’d say nightmare scenarios would be: * PA * travel agent * event planner
      - JohnBooty 3y ago
        It's funny because I could see those going either way for ADHD individuals either nightmare scenarios or dream scenarios i've actually done some small amount of event planning, an annual event for about 125 people. (i realize that's tiny, obviously people are out there planning events for 100,000 people) yeah, you're constantly switching your focus back and forth between the 20 things that need to get nailed down in the next 3 months for an upcoming event. and a professional event planner is probably juggling ten small events or several larger ones. it's a juggling act but it's kind of fun. also you have executive freedom to an extent. engineering is kind of fucked because you are expected to do deep deep deep deep deep big-brain thinking for 2000 hours a year, and yet you are still often bombarded with distractions on a minute to minute basis. absolute MISMATCH. event planning is chaotic by nature, and hard, and requires context switching, but generally no individual element requires hours of meditative thought and iteration while 3 different managers ping you on fucking Slack and you're also supposed to "keep an eye on production" and also mentor five kids who just graduated from a 6-week code camp like engineering does. a lot of entrepreneurs are ADHD as hell. the context switching suits them, especially when they are calling the shots.
lolinder 3y ago
> I find that, if time allows, I get a massive productivity boost after 4:30pm and everyone is either winding down or leaving. The most important ADHD accommodation for me has been a private office (in my case working from home). I'm insanely distractible—the slightest noise can throw me off, and even the threat of an impending interruption is enough to make me lose focus thinking about how I'll respond if it comes. In an open office, I had very little control over my environment, and so it was impossible for me to keep focused for any length of time. If it wasn't a coworker interrupting me personally, it was a conversation happening behind me, or even just someone walking by and me wondering if they're going to interrupt. At home, I have a private office with a locked door, and I put on hearing protection over earbuds, which blocks essentially all sounds from the house. I can control my notifications, so if I'm in flow I'm completely uninterruptible. The other big benefit from privacy is that I don't have to feel guilty when I do get distracted with something. There's no one to see me and judge me for not "looking like I'm working", so when I do lose focus for hours and then get the whole day's work done in a single hour of hyperfocus, no one knows or cares that I couldn't stay focused that day—all they see is that I finished what I said I would. Privacy allows me to use my strengths (working well under pressure) without fear of judgement.
- qumpis 3y ago
  Why not put these earbuds in the office?
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    Overthinking responses to interruptions, looking for visual cues etc?
  - wpm 3y ago
    Did you not read about all the visual and social interruptions they talked about? Noise-cancelling for your eyes is called a blindfold.
  - gopher_space 3y ago
    The fundamental point is that I'm not putting a box on my head so I can cope with your open floorplan.
hinkley 3y ago
I have migrated toward process and disaster recovery/avoidance over time. In the last ten years I have spent a lot of time thinking about the latter because everywhere I have ever worked, if an emergency goes on long enough I am one of the last three people still having a coherent thought at the end, and often the only person with enough brain cells to summarize what just happened and propose a 5 Why’s theory. Which sounds like bragging if you ignore the consequences of this, which is that I am also the last person to recover to 100% in the following days. Which is exactly why I’m thinking about it so much. I have learned at least two things about myself and a few about other people from all of this. For myself, I know I am overly acclimated to blowing past my limits into my reserves. I am used to constantly monitoring my mental state and pushing for breaks. For others, I know that adrenaline and cortisol reduce everyone’s cognitive abilities. It’s why we do fire drills. It’s why NASA launch facilities ritualize everything. Save your brain cells and improvisational skills for things we can’t predict, not for things we can. In the first hours of an emergency, everyone else’s brain turns to mush while mine gets just a little squishy. What for them is their worst work day in months is to me just a bad Tuesday. And self monitoring is one of the first things to go. They’re operating at 80% while I’m at 95%, and they absolutely won’t call for breathers without prompting. On projects where I am at the periphery, we all struggle together. On projects where I get to influence the agenda, or even father chunks of it, people often walk back out of that room feeling like they braced for a collision that never came, because I’ve routed around all of the foot guns and created low cognitive load ways to answer the important questions. If anyone has been complaining about me spending “too much time” on this, about half of them are convinced after one or two non-event events. If the majority of the people didn’t agree with my methods before, they do now. I used to say I spend my A-game days protecting myself from my C-game days, but these days I’m more likely to cite Kernighan’s aphorism about not being smart enough to debug your own code. Write all of your code like you’re going to have to wrestle with it on an off day, because you certainly will at some point. And putting high functioning ADHD people in charge of process and tooling is not a terrible idea. If you can figure out who those people are, that is. To be high functioning means constantly masking, because in this world it’s better to be rude and aloof than to be seen as broken. On my current project our hot fix process is so bullet proof that I could do a hot fix in the middle of our sprint demo. And I have, three times. Once while I was the MC. All of that was me, and the automation tools I wrote for myself are the official process now. And instead of a bus number of 3 it’s somewhere north of 6. Important, especially this time of year.
s3r3nity 3y ago
> Only 1 14" screen and a different timezone Of all the optimizations I've done, moving to one screen/monitor ~10 years ago has been the biggest positive impact on my work, anxiety, and overall focus. When I was younger, I was way too naive in the memetic desire when seeing other more senior folks with multiple screens, or even seeing "hacker" representations in the media with many screens with different orientations (silly, I know...everyone is dumb when they're young.) When you're 22 and insecure about whether or not you're actually "good" or belong, then you try to mimic the "best."
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by keyle 3y ago

Apocryphon 3y ago

I’m sure 90s workplaces were relatively better, but bliss? That was the heyday of Dilbert, Office Space, Fight Club, American Beauty, and The Matrix.

FullKirby 3y ago

Being distracted (even a lot) and actually having ADHD are very different things

muhblah 3y ago
Thanks, also had this discussion with a colleague (obviously not having ADHD) who thought he understands what I’m (having ADHD diagnosed) talking about and I argue he does not. I then almost started to doubt my own perception abilities InsertHugeFacepalmHere
- swozey 3y ago
  If you ever forget or wonder if you have ADHD vs being inattentive, just look back at its affects on your romantic relationships and how much it damaged them or made them more difficult. How often a partner probably told you that they felt neglected or forgotten, or how often you'd wind up in a rabbit hole and forget that you also have to nourish that relationship.
  - muhblah 3y ago
    Totally agree. I stopped counting long time ago.
  - _4pjx 3y ago
    Oof. This hits close to home. I have ADHD and my partner recently ended a four-year relationship for several reasons but feeling neglected and like she had to fight to get my attention was one of them. We didn't consciously realize this was a major problem until it was too late. And now reading this thread I'm realizing wow yeah I really wasn't doing a good job of paying attention to her and her needs even though I cared a lot about her, now this is something to be aware of and put effort into changing in my next relationship.
    - swozey 3y ago
      It's something that I unfortunately didn't put 2+2 together until my 30s after ruining quite a few and always wondering why I would be so enamored with someone and they never felt like I was giving them enough. And my most recent ex was anxious attached. That was rough. I'm far more on the avoidant side, not sure how much of that is upbringing vs adhd. There's a bunch of books about marriage/relationships with ADHD people. I haven't read any but I should. The lady in this video has written a bunch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pyAfOPGKlI&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pyAfOPGKlI&t=1s
atcalan 3y ago
This!!! ADHD is unfortunately named based on misunderstanding of the prefrontal cortex. It is executive function disorder. Similar behaviors occur from prefrontal cortex trauma. Barkley notes that ADHD stays so named because it is tied legally to entitlements.

conception 3y ago

If you haven’t tried any sort of mindfulness/meditation program, I’d recommend one. I like Ten Percent Happier and enjoyed the app and its content (not affiliated in any way). Being able to think about nothing is a skill/habit/muscle that needs to be learned and practiced. My mind still can churn but at least now I have the tools and some ability to tell it “not now” and quiet it some. It’s been pretty dramatic, especially in being able to fall asleep quicker.

jimmydddd 3y ago
Agreed. I like the vibe of Ten Percent Happier which is kind of like "Yeah, I thought this meditation stuff was bogus, but, for some reason it helps. No, it won't solve all of your problems, but it does seem to make things 10 percent better. And don't even think about saying 'Namaste.'" :-)
keyle 3y ago
I will try this, thanks!
atcalan 3y ago
Unfortunately genuine ADHD is a physiological problem that requires stimulant therapy _and_ cognitive behavior therapy in conjunction. Your dopamine and/or acetylcholine receptors are out of whack. This is why coffee and cigarettes/vapes are so prevalent. Methylphenidate or dexamphetamine work best but you pay a price. Yes, I have real world executive function research lab experience, so I know a bit of what I'm talking about. You need a good neurologist.
- collegeburner 3y ago
  Maybe you can provide some perspective here: it seems almost universal that people who start these medications never find a dose that provides durable benefit over the long term. Makes sense; we acclimate to a new dopamine baseline, right? Almost everyone I know ends up on a significantly higher dose than they started with. And the stories of feeling like a zombie when off meds are very real and pretty freaky.

Eumenes 3y ago

> Add to today: kids, imessages, facebook, twitter, mastodon, instagram, emails, slack, discord... How the fuck do I even survive the week? uh, perhaps by not using all of those things? sounds like you're uber distracted

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
Kids: not even once. Seriously, though, there might be external factors at play; different social circles might use these things and abandoning the apps could be the same as abandoning the groups.
- aidos 3y ago
  You’re at work. Sure, there’s Slack - but dial the notifications down as much as you can. Almost none of us need access to social tools in that time. If you can’t help yourself then do what developers do and use tech to stop you reaching for those things.

Teridee 3y ago

At my company, we have daily standups and they throw off my whole morning. I only really work effectively when I am left to it and so have outlook/slack/messages turned off during periods where I am trying to focus - has got me in trouble with management a few times but I am not sure what else i can do. The piece was a good read but its so personal to me that it doesn't really help sadly.

cottage-cheese 3y ago
> has got me in trouble with management a few times but I am not sure what else i can do Don't worry about it. I think this is good advice for any software engineer. Eventually you'll be senior enough or on a different team and it won't be a problem.
- throwoutway 3y ago
  Agreed, I'd add to give your manager your phone number for emergencies and tell them you've allow-listed their number to ring when others can't. Then get back to flow
  - TremendousJudge 3y ago
    That sounds like a terrible idea to me, I'd never want to do that. If they like the work I do, management should learn to respect the way I do it.
    - dannyw 3y ago
      Sometimes there are genuine emergencies. If your company got hacked and is all hands on deck, you kinda have to be interrupted. There are situations in which emergencies may not be paged through normal systems.
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      If you have the kind of clueless/toxic manager who is going to abuse this sort of arrangement, they are probably never going to agree to this sort of arrangement in this first place. For nearly all working relationships, I think it's reasonable to keep an emergency communication channel open.

granra 3y ago

This comment absolutely reads as someone with ADHD telling a story :D

keyle 3y ago
I think self-deprecating humour is one and sometimes the only weapon against today. Glad it made you smile!
- granra 3y ago
  I want to add that I've also been diagnosed with ADHD so I didn't mean anything bad by it :)

PaulWaldman 3y ago

>I find that, if time allows, I get a massive productivity boost after 4:30pm This sounds oddly specific. How consistent is this time? If you start working an hour earlier does it impact the timing of your productivity boost?

sedivy94 3y ago
I experience a flow state around that time as well. Mostly because everyone leaves the office. 0630-0730 and 1630-1730 have become my golden hours. Which is weird because body doubling is often an effective tool for me. My true “0430” like the parent comment is really at 2000, but I force myself into a normal sleep schedule and fail often.
- erosenbe0 3y ago
  Does the time change for you with season and light exposure? I sometimes experience this sort of thing too, where I will have a consistent window of productivity at an unusual time, but it never lasts for a more than a few months.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  Yeah. My body/brain's natural "mental flow" time is really early mornings. In reality, I generally have too much external distraction around me in the morning to capitalize on this. So my actual productive hours are basically like, "whenever I am reasonably sure that everybody else will leave me the fuck alone for the next few hours." Which often means, "the end of the work day when everybody is signing off for the day."

b33j0r 3y ago

I have been fired while I was off getting more insurance-approved stimulants. You ask us to perform unreasonably tops, then hate us for inventing doordash and shit because: we were smart labor, not cheap.

atcalan 3y ago
In the US? EEOC would like to have a word with your employer.
- b33j0r 3y ago
  I’m too old and arrogant to be litigious. I just try to clear the path for the next generation by equipping them with expectations that match reality closer than I got.

navjack27 3y ago

I think ADHD is the new norm. Huh? ADHD is a debilitating and disabling disorder... I don't think you're talking about ADHD.

sedivy94 3y ago
ADHD has little to no physiological markers. As the floor of expectations for attention and executive functioning continues to rise, the rate of diagnosis increases.
- fao_ 3y ago
  citation needed. ADHD is a deficit in dopamine processing/production within the brain, it has physiological signs that we can look for: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s11689-022-09440-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s11689-022-09440-2
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    DSM-V and ICD? ADHD is diagnosed based on symptoms, not based on physiological signs. Like most diagnoses, it's a co-occurring set of traits we'de decided is outside of what's normal.
    - atcalan 3y ago
      Diagnosis is not the same as underlying physiological cause. The Browns or Vanderbilt assessments are useful for identifying the disorder because the symptoms are stereotypical.
    - InSteady 3y ago
      This is being investigated and may eventually become part of the diagnosis (if you can afford the tests): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1026616/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1026... >In conclusion, a series of biomarkers in the literature are promising as objective parameters to more accurately diagnose ADHD, especially in those with comorbidities that prevent the use of DSM-5. However, more research is needed to confirm the reliability of the biomarkers in larger cohort studies. But yeah, generally there are a lot of conditions where you go report symptoms to your doctor or perhaps a specialist and they prescribe a treatment based on that alone. Testing is mostly used to rule out the really nasty possibilities or figure out what's actually going on when first-line treatments don't work.

pc86 3y ago

Such a minor part of your comment, but I simply cannot focus on anything if my apps aren't all fullscreen. I have two monitors, and two applications visible at any time. Right now I have this on one screen and a non-work YouTube video on the other (Your Mom's House is a great podcast btw, especially if you already have YT premium). I have trouble focusing, I don't think quite to the level of ADHD, but it would be so much worse if I had 4 or 5 apps on each screen.

rovr138 3y ago
> I don't think quite to the level of ADHD Or you found coping mechanisms. We all figure out what works for us. Like drinking a ton of coffee or things with caffeine... you're self medicating with your stimulant of choice.
erosenbe0 3y ago
That's fairly common. Think back to old school paper workflows or studying for school. Some people can concentrate with 5 books open and papers strewn all over the place. Others can't stand to have but one book open and one sheet of notes.
JohnBooty 3y ago
You know, it's funny how different we are all when it comes to this. I need all my apps visible in a tiled arrangement. Shuffling windows shatters my flow. I literally cannot have enough screen real estate. My dream is something like a curved 48" 8K monitor filling my entire field of view at 300dpi. (Vision Pro?) I know a lot of people, ADHD and otherwise, like me in this regard. I also know a guy like you, diagnosed with ADHD FWIW, who takes it a little further than you. He needs his apps fullscreened, and can't even do multiple monitors. One screen, one app. I don't know how the f-- he works that way but I'm jealous. He's effective and has no trouble working on a 13" laptop in a coffee shop or whatever.
- swozey 3y ago
  I had a coworker a few years ago who worked ONLY on his laptop. No monitors. No keyboard. No mouse. He programmed all day on a 13" Macbook Pro. I will never understand it because I absolutely hate having full screen windows and I am almost worthless working off my laptop when traveling. Just lots of frustration juggling windows back and forth. I always have 2 or 3 apps side by side on my 48" and I have a 28" 16:18 DualUp monitor next to it for long text/dev. I didn't work with him so I don't know how productive he actually was but I've always been curious if he kept up with the people who had 2-3 monitors and input devices. I have a hard time believing that he did but no actual idea.

gosub100 3y ago

during covid I was "overemployed" at first 2 jobs, then 3 (which I sustained for over 8 months). Some of it was luck, like not having conflicting meetings, having jobs in different timezones, and the leniency given due to the chaos of the times, but I actually did get work done. But during the average day, I was only there to respond to slack and participate in meetings. I wouldn't really "work" as in write code, until after the sun went down (and I was west-coast working a central time job). I was just a body in a seat until the day was over, then once I knew nobody was available to pester me or expect me to do something, I could crack open the editor and hyperfocus. I also found that getting up super early, I could hyperfocus for an hour or 2 in the AM, then about 9-10am once all the meetings and bs started, I was just an actor. The rest of the time was juggling tasks and procrastinating, and using that energy to drive me to get work done. I would work saturday and sunday mornings (often, not always), but once my focus was lost I would stop. It was a hell of a time, but I learned that (like you) certain times of the day just weren't compatible with getting anything done. I dont think it's correct to say its due to "overstimulation" or caffeine, I think it has to do with brain states, and somehow knowing that I had to be available on slack (or had to make sure my mouse jiggler kept my status green) seemed to be enough to break me away from writing code.

datadrivenangel 3y ago
Was it worth it to have multiple jobs?
- gosub100 3y ago
  For me personally, yes. I had gone into debt from gambling and bad financial discipline. OE allowed me to pay off all my debt and put a down payment on a house. Watching "number go down" in rapid fashion was very rewarding, and I wasn't a very active person to begin with so I didn't miss out on as much as a regular person would, being holed up in an apartment for virtually the whole year. But towards the end it had an effect on me, it definitely wasn't sustainable.

muhblah 3y ago

This reflects exactly my day to day struggles. Especially that productivity boost when every one starts leaving, and I _was not able_ to finished the smallest one of my tasks planned for the day 'til then most of the time. I'm writing "was not able" on purpose here, because as someone (being blessed) with ADHD, your brain does not allow you to make progress on the smallest tasks due to all those fireworks being blown around you in your brain. During my part-time studies (I had a 70-80% employment at that time) the time I really started studying productively was after 9-10pm when everyone around me went to finish their day and the world around me started to go silent and night is coming in. Thinking of it today, I don't know how I would have survived that time without the huge support from my wife back then. So all the credits of me being able to complete my studies go to her! Nowadays, I would not know how I would get through the day-to-day work without medication most days. That often worries me a little.

swader999 3y ago
Yup, I think all the meds for this can succumb to tolerance. A real life Flowers for Algernon. Over the years I've upped the dose, switched meds, drug holidays but nothing has matched how well my brain worked the first couple of years on meds.
- muhblah 3y ago
  > nothing has matched how well my brain worked the first couple of years on meds As someone who also has a bit more than 2 decades experience with ADHD medication and started with meds quite early in my teenage years when I went to school, I have very similar experience to yours. One of my assumptions is that it also has a lot to do with the humans metabolism that changes over the years.
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    One of my assumptions is that it also has a lot to do with the humans metabolism that changes over the years. That theory makes sense to me. However, my anecdotal experience is that I never tried any of these meds until my early 30's. The first few weeks on Adderall were f'ing magical. I remember tearing up, I was so happy. Finally I was laser-focused. A bit emotional thinking of it now. The magic faded fast. Adderall was still a large net positive for me for ~6-7 years. But never like those first few weeks. I guess I got somewhat close to that original experience a few times, after extended breaks from Adderall and restarting it. Anyway, this is of course a sample size of 1. But since all the experiences described above took place in my 30s I don't think that metabolism change was a major factor. Certainly not within the first year. Again I know... n=1 =)

swader999 3y ago

I hate having stand-up early am. If you get to work early, there's little motivation to start anything significant just because you'll be soon interrupted. Mid day before lunch is great, you get a sleep period in between two work sessions which often leads to better solutions. Everyone wants to go to lunch so the meeting moves at a quick pace, you have lunch time to decompress and absorb it. There's a morning block and afternoon block for uninterrupted deep work. It gives people a flexible arrive time in the morning, they aren't struggling to make it in for the meeting.

albert_e 3y ago

> 1 or 2 emails a day. Bliss. Just reading that made me feel the presence of 'bliss' :)

Aurornis 3y ago

> I remember once I had to travel for family, to a different timezone, I was super productive. Only 1 14" screen and a different timezone. Pedal to the metal. I think the pop-culture definition of ADHD has shifted a lot. In the past, being able to focus well (as you described in a different environment) would have been a sign that the issue was more environmental in nature, not a sign of clinical ADHD. Patients with ADHD struggled everywhere, even in distraction-free environments like a quiet library or quiet test taking environment. Now, the pop-culture understanding of ADHD has shifted so far that we don’t bat an eye at declaring ADHD even when someone is operating under a constant barrage of environmental distractions. To be clear, someone with ADHD will have an even harder time resisting impulses to seek out distractions, but the fact that someone can focus just fine when their environment is minimally structured to keep distractions at a reasonable level would suggest that person doesn’t have classic ADHD. > I think ADHD is the new norm. I think this is my problem with the current pop-culture definition of ADHD: When the definition shifts so much that it becomes the “norm”, we’ve lost the plot. Something isn’t really a disorder if it’s “the norm”. There’s a secondary problem I’ve been noticing in a subset of the young people I’ve worked with: Some of them self-diagnose with ADHD or get a doctor’s diagnosis, then mistakenly think that their ADHD diagnosis is an excuse for everything. I’ve had far too many conversations where I had to gently explain to juniors (via a volunteer mentor program, not as their boss) that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn’t mean that deadlines don’t apply them, or that they get a free pass for being late to meetings, or that they’re still obligated to perform at the level of their peers at work. Some of them have grown up in an environment where ADHD students get extra time to take tests, which some of them assume should translate to more forgiving expectations at work. It’s difficult to get some of them to accept that having ADHD means they need more accountability and oversight, not less. I think we’re making a huge mistake by normalizing ADHD to the point that people think it’s the norm or that everyone has it because they surround themselves with distractions. Anecdotally, I’ve seen too many young people self-diagnose with ADHD and then actually spend less effort to curtail distractions, train their focus, and work on self-improvement. There’s something about becoming convinced that your behaviors are a medical condition that is out of your control (many erroneously declare they have a “dopamine deficiency” or similar misunderstandings of the science) that can give people a false sense that they either can’t improve their situation or that they shouldn’t be held responsible because it’s a labeled medical condition. I don’t know where we go from here, but I can say it’s been an uphill battle to get recent mentoring cohorts to accept that attention is something they can improve with practice or even that they need to do things like silence phone notifications while they work. I’m often stunned when I screen share with someone who has a non-stop stream of unimportant notifications in the top right corner, who later laments that they just can’t focus on anything for someone.

cottage-cheese 3y ago

> I think ADHD is the new norm. Maybe selection bias, but a significant number of my friends are diagnosed.

atcalan 3y ago
5% of the population have the disorder. Self selection may be causing you to see it as very prevalent.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  I think that may be true. I also think it's true that many professions will aggressively surface ADHD. Imagine a plumber making house calls all day. There's a fair bit of structure and variety baked into his day, he's moving around, gets to use his hands, etc. It's hard and skilled work but it also might be really compatible with ADHD. Now think of a software engineer. 8-10 hours of monofocus on a single task every day. It's just you and the computer... which also has the largest array of distractions (the internet) just a click away. Fucking nightmare scenario for ADHD. If you've got even a hint of ADHD this career will expose it and expose it hard.
  - plugin-baby 3y ago
    I’d say nightmare scenarios would be: * PA * travel agent * event planner
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      It's funny because I could see those going either way for ADHD individuals either nightmare scenarios or dream scenarios i've actually done some small amount of event planning, an annual event for about 125 people. (i realize that's tiny, obviously people are out there planning events for 100,000 people) yeah, you're constantly switching your focus back and forth between the 20 things that need to get nailed down in the next 3 months for an upcoming event. and a professional event planner is probably juggling ten small events or several larger ones. it's a juggling act but it's kind of fun. also you have executive freedom to an extent. engineering is kind of fucked because you are expected to do deep deep deep deep deep big-brain thinking for 2000 hours a year, and yet you are still often bombarded with distractions on a minute to minute basis. absolute MISMATCH. event planning is chaotic by nature, and hard, and requires context switching, but generally no individual element requires hours of meditative thought and iteration while 3 different managers ping you on fucking Slack and you're also supposed to "keep an eye on production" and also mentor five kids who just graduated from a 6-week code camp like engineering does. a lot of entrepreneurs are ADHD as hell. the context switching suits them, especially when they are calling the shots.

lolinder 3y ago

> I find that, if time allows, I get a massive productivity boost after 4:30pm and everyone is either winding down or leaving. The most important ADHD accommodation for me has been a private office (in my case working from home). I'm insanely distractible—the slightest noise can throw me off, and even the threat of an impending interruption is enough to make me lose focus thinking about how I'll respond if it comes. In an open office, I had very little control over my environment, and so it was impossible for me to keep focused for any length of time. If it wasn't a coworker interrupting me personally, it was a conversation happening behind me, or even just someone walking by and me wondering if they're going to interrupt. At home, I have a private office with a locked door, and I put on hearing protection over earbuds, which blocks essentially all sounds from the house. I can control my notifications, so if I'm in flow I'm completely uninterruptible. The other big benefit from privacy is that I don't have to feel guilty when I do get distracted with something. There's no one to see me and judge me for not "looking like I'm working", so when I do lose focus for hours and then get the whole day's work done in a single hour of hyperfocus, no one knows or cares that I couldn't stay focused that day—all they see is that I finished what I said I would. Privacy allows me to use my strengths (working well under pressure) without fear of judgement.

qumpis 3y ago
Why not put these earbuds in the office?
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Overthinking responses to interruptions, looking for visual cues etc?
- wpm 3y ago
  Did you not read about all the visual and social interruptions they talked about? Noise-cancelling for your eyes is called a blindfold.
- gopher_space 3y ago
  The fundamental point is that I'm not putting a box on my head so I can cope with your open floorplan.

hinkley 3y ago

I have migrated toward process and disaster recovery/avoidance over time. In the last ten years I have spent a lot of time thinking about the latter because everywhere I have ever worked, if an emergency goes on long enough I am one of the last three people still having a coherent thought at the end, and often the only person with enough brain cells to summarize what just happened and propose a 5 Why’s theory. Which sounds like bragging if you ignore the consequences of this, which is that I am also the last person to recover to 100% in the following days. Which is exactly why I’m thinking about it so much. I have learned at least two things about myself and a few about other people from all of this. For myself, I know I am overly acclimated to blowing past my limits into my reserves. I am used to constantly monitoring my mental state and pushing for breaks. For others, I know that adrenaline and cortisol reduce everyone’s cognitive abilities. It’s why we do fire drills. It’s why NASA launch facilities ritualize everything. Save your brain cells and improvisational skills for things we can’t predict, not for things we can. In the first hours of an emergency, everyone else’s brain turns to mush while mine gets just a little squishy. What for them is their worst work day in months is to me just a bad Tuesday. And self monitoring is one of the first things to go. They’re operating at 80% while I’m at 95%, and they absolutely won’t call for breathers without prompting. On projects where I am at the periphery, we all struggle together. On projects where I get to influence the agenda, or even father chunks of it, people often walk back out of that room feeling like they braced for a collision that never came, because I’ve routed around all of the foot guns and created low cognitive load ways to answer the important questions. If anyone has been complaining about me spending “too much time” on this, about half of them are convinced after one or two non-event events. If the majority of the people didn’t agree with my methods before, they do now. I used to say I spend my A-game days protecting myself from my C-game days, but these days I’m more likely to cite Kernighan’s aphorism about not being smart enough to debug your own code. Write all of your code like you’re going to have to wrestle with it on an off day, because you certainly will at some point. And putting high functioning ADHD people in charge of process and tooling is not a terrible idea. If you can figure out who those people are, that is. To be high functioning means constantly masking, because in this world it’s better to be rude and aloof than to be seen as broken. On my current project our hot fix process is so bullet proof that I could do a hot fix in the middle of our sprint demo. And I have, three times. Once while I was the MC. All of that was me, and the automation tools I wrote for myself are the official process now. And instead of a bus number of 3 it’s somewhere north of 6. Important, especially this time of year.

s3r3nity 3y ago

> Only 1 14" screen and a different timezone Of all the optimizations I've done, moving to one screen/monitor ~10 years ago has been the biggest positive impact on my work, anxiety, and overall focus. When I was younger, I was way too naive in the memetic desire when seeing other more senior folks with multiple screens, or even seeing "hacker" representations in the media with many screens with different orientations (silly, I know...everyone is dumb when they're young.) When you're 22 and insecure about whether or not you're actually "good" or belong, then you try to mimic the "best."

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