Comment by treeman79
2 years ago
ADHD runs very strong in my family. My mom never learned to control it and lets it ruin her interactions. Changing topics 2-3 times in a sentience is not uncommon. My career was a mix of major success and failures. Basically depending how routine or novel the problem set was. Took medication at 40 for the first time.
First time in my life I was able to work on something boring where it didn’t feel physically painful to be doing it. Sadly I don’t tolerate the medication well. (Pain) so I do without it.
Alternatives are always very attractive.
I’ve often thought it would be awesome if I could just pay someone minimum wage to sit behind me and tap on my shoulder every time I got off task.
I've often thought the same thing and have heard it from others too.
Body doubling seems to be a common technique. I've often considered if some form of self surveillance (webcam, heart rate, computer usage metrics) combined with ML could observe and "nudge" you along.
For (intrusive) thoughts sometimes I'd rather not fight it because I'll randomly suddenly remember something that I couldn't recall over an hour ago, or be reminded, or see a vague connection to another topic that could be useful to investigate later.
Maybe it's not so much being reminded to stay on task but make it as frictionless as possible to capture something and put it away safely so before you get completely derailed...
As for attention "drift" when you're forcing yourself to work on something that really saps your energy so your subconscious is trying to protect you by pulling you away? The only thing I've found to help is to organise my life so that the conditions that cause that to occur have less of a chance of happening (getting enough sleep, eating protein, taking medication at consistent time with food, meditating, listening to my body and taking regular breaks to prevent crossing the overwhelm threshold, do enough housework on routine so there's no reasonable excuse to do a load of laundry) which I guess is what a lot of coaching will try and help you do, setting up practical systems to remove triggers and optimise the ideal conditions (my speculation).
I can't remember why I started writing this reply or if I'm even anywhere close to it being on topic now, but rather than delete it, I'm just going to leave it here.
My mom is similar, but I am not. I can stay on topic quite well and inability to do so is bothersome to me, so I see that and think, “I don’t have any of that.”
But when you said boring tasks are painful, and wanting someone to tap you on the shoulder when you get off task, I was nodding along vigorously. My best solution to this (so far) is to ensure my way of contributing meaningfully to things doesn’t require rote, boring work. :) I’ve considered setting up a camera over my shoulder just to give myself the feeling of being observed…
This hit HN two days after my comment, so for anyone else who stumbles across this thread, here is a link to another HN thread where people discuss “body doubling” and similar websites/services to help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33478562
Maybe the two of you can be that person for each other!
You got a good chuckle from me on that last comment.
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm sorry about the pain re: Medication :(