Comment by keyle

Why not put these earbuds in the office?

This exact complaint is very common among juniors I’ve mentored: A single meeting can destroy their productivity for hours following the meeting.

The most successful advice I’ve found is to find a way to reset after meetings without using your computer. For whatever reason, they’re emotionally drained after meetings. They get back to their computer and reach for Reddit or Twitter or something for a low effort snack, which then spirals into an hour or more of doomscrolling or distractions. This then translates into self disappointment at their low productivity, which further drives them to seek more cheap online entertainment and the cycle repeats.

So try something else. After your standup, go for a walk. Don’t use your phone. Do some stretches if you WFH or have a quiet place. Whatever you do, don’t fall into the rut that destroys your productivity.

Standups kind of destroy my flow as well. HOWEVER:

- Everything destroys my flow anyway. So $#&#$% fragile.

- Standups are 100x less destructive to my flow than random unscheduled synchronous communication.

- For management and collaboration purposes, I recognize the need for some kind of synchronous communication for most projects/jobs.

- When working remotely I've found video standups help keep me feeling connected to humanity.

- Most teams I've been on are quite understanding if you choose to miss standup and offer an update via Slack instead because you're "in the zone."

So.... they suck, but they have upsides for me, and I accept them as kind of a "least-bad compromise solution."

This is because your brain is like ChatGPT: it's in a loop generating the next symbol based on the prior context. You need to load the context up, then you're ready to generate symbols. If there's a BS meeting, all that context is paged out and now you need to re-load it. Plus there are motivational aspects that make "loading context some AH manager just blew out my brain" more difficult.

That's a bummer. My team does standup at 3 PM (we're also bi-costal), but I let the teams chose their time, and this is what one particular team chose. Maybe talk to some of your teammates, and maybe you all decide you want an afternoon standup, so you can hit the ground running in the morning for a few hours, before the interruptions start.

I found that standups help crystallize social consequences in my VM prefrontal cortex so they help keep me honest.

Depends on where you are, but you can often get by, ignoring directives from management, if you are an active communicator and you’re completing assigned tasks.

It’s still better to state your problem. I like to use the “non-violent communication” as a template. Something like, “When we have the standup, I have a hard time refocusing on work afterwards. I’m concerned about the impact this has on my productivity. Can I send status updates via Slack?”

I’m not gonna pretend that this is a solution to your problem; I just want to sympathize and have a conversation about some of the strategies that we can use to fix problems with management that interfere with technical work.

I'm the opposite. I have ADHD and I function much better with meetings, talking it out with other programmers, and the cacophony of noise from an open office. Everything distracts me anyway, so I'd rather it be work stuff than my own thoughts about some awkward moment I had in 1995.

> 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.

daily check-in throws off my morning too. i have an hour from when i start til check-in, which is not enough time to get into deep work. looking forward to moving to a new timezone where i can take advantage of that timing with two hours before check-in.

we changed our standups to right after lunch and this has helped for everyone

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.

> 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.

This is super true for me as well, to the point where I structure my day around this. I'm lucky to have a workplace with flexible hours and enough seniority that nobody complains when I roll in at 10, which gives me a few "quiet hours" from 4-6 as others trickle out.

As someone with a lot of focus potential, its mildly frustrating to read these accounts because even I'm terribly distracted, if I let myself be. But I've been meditating for a while and, in conjunction with a lot of discipline around avoiding social media, have been able to hit a sweet spot.

I wonder though if I never discovered these two things, and simply absorbed everything I read online and convinced myself I had ADHD and got on meds. It's modern life, getting people down. There's simply no way to break through without recognizing that life is inherently distracting, and finding strategies around that.

This is not dismissing the reality of ADHD, however, only to note that medication is overprescribed and that many confuse biology with extremely targeted algorithms designed to capture attention.

And then there are the drug companies who capitalize on workers required to maintain long periods of focus; knowing they are vulnerable to performance pressure, they flood the industry with marketing. Next thing you know, an entirely healthy person's attention is destroyed, because the new baseline is oriented around a stimulant which they do not need, and which operate contrary to someone who actually has ADHD, which meds benefit. Like the opiate crisis, its all just an everyday American tragedy.

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.

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.'" :-)

I will try this, thanks!

Was it worth it to have multiple jobs?

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.

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

I think self-deprecating humour is one and sometimes the only weapon against today. Glad it made you smile!

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

In the US? EEOC would like to have a word with your employer.

I’m using chunk of my A-game days to improve the results of my B- and C-days. This means automating and simplifying things as much as possible. In work, hobbies and life in general. A-days are rare, and even though they are very productive, the output is mostly generated on B and C. Being able to progress even on the bad days shies away the meltdowns and burning out.

    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

    [...] 

    Patients with ADHD struggled everywhere, even in 
    distraction-free environments like a quiet library 
    or quiet test taking environment.

Imperfect analogy, but this is a bit like saying that somebody who is able to walk with reasonable assistive devices doesn't have a physical disability.

Like many or perhaps most things we classify as disorders, ADHD isn't a binary "you have it or you don't" condition.

Also, what constitutes "distractions at a reasonable level?" Very few jobs would meet my personal definition of that.

    declaring ADHD even when someone is operating 
    under a constant barrage of environmental distractions

The definition of "disorder" in an individual is always going to be somewhat relative to the society in which that person lives and that person's life.

A person who lightly dabbles in illicit substances once in a blue moon would not generally be considered to have a drug problem. However, this is also going to be relative to that person's circumstances. Are you a 23 year old with no responsibilities? Are you a breastfeeding mother? Are you in a profession with frequent random drug tests? Are you a shaman in a culture where psychedelics have been a sacred part of your culture for thousands of years? The definition of problematic drug use is going to be very different for some than others.

As our society changes, and the number of assaults on our focus multiply, I think it is reasonable to expect more ADHD diagnoses.

Another way to think about it is that modern (and future) society will expose ADHD more aggressively. A farmer in 1923 lived a hard and demanding life, but he faced a very different set of cognitive challenges than a software engineer in 2023.

Think about how changing society exposed some humans' susceptibility to motion sickness. Motion sickness was not a thing until we learned to ride animals and build vehicles. Perhaps someday the DSM may contain some disorders specific to humans living in colonies on other planets.

    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

A thousand times yes.

I love that we've made great strides toward destigmatizing mental health issues. But holy shit, it feels like younger people wear this shit as a badge of pride and it often feels like an excuse to avoid actual solutioning.

A loved one was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I told them I'll be their best friend and their toughest critic when it comes to ADHD. I told will love you and empathize with your struggles all day long because I have been fighting this shit for almost 50 years and it is soul-draining.

I also told them, watch the fuck out. I accept zero excuses. We can struggle together, we can cry together, but you better be looking at every single facet of your ADHD through the lens of figuring out a working solution.

"I have ADHD!" is not an acceptable excuse or thought-terminator. What I want to hear is, "I have ADHD so what works for me is doing it this way: ______" or perhaps even better yet just leave off the ADHD part and tell me your solution. Or that you are working on the solution. I will be by your side for that too. But overall that has got to be your mindset.

There may be a little bit of birds of a feather flocking together on this one. Similarly my closest circle have all got a diagnosis of something or other. Most are in the IT field too.

For me personally I mostly attribute this to how the circle initially formed - a bunch of outcasts to varying degrees new to college glomping on to any familiar faces from highschool (despite not really interacting during high school)

Any additions since college were adopted into the group through a mutual "we're the weirdos in this world, aren't we?" initial bond.

For myself, I find I mostly can't maintain relationships with other people who don't have ADHD.

It sounds stupid, but I will forget to talk for months and people just drift off, not interested in reconnecting.

But other people with ADHD will reconnect after months as if we'd just been talking yesterday, no bad feelings of being ignored at all.

5% of the population have the disorder. Self selection may be causing you to see it as very prevalent.

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.

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.