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Ask HN: How do you deal with your brain not being “on?”
31–34 of 34 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with your brain not being “on?”
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have ADD. Source: I have ADD.
Curious what "mild" ADD looks like? I've not necessarily had issues impacting my life but can be very forgetful (top of the stack always takes priority) which drives my wife crazy, and I often describe my work as "loading up for a few days to do a weeks worth of work in a 3-hour flow session" (which has worked well for me).
The problem is that ADHD (and its related disorders) can't really be measured (on a scale from 1 to 10, for example).
In reality, it's like a color wheel or a spiderweb chart of different symptoms/characteristics/idiosyncrasies, only said wheel/chart also has a depth component. There are so many nuances of behavior/habit and crossover with other disorders (depression, anxiety, oppositional/defiant disorder) as well as going hand in hand with much nicer stuff (creativity, introspectivity, intelligence etc).
When I was diagnosed, someone I knew scoffed at me and said "no way, I know a girl with ADHD and she's bouncing off walls, you don't have ADHD" and have known other people to say outright that it's a load of crap and is made up etc.
It's just... Not. That. Simple.
What I do know for sure is that since being diagnosed (10 years ago, at 31), and commencing medication, things turned around in a colossal way. Medication doesn't fix ADHD, it just helps break down that motiviational wall that makes it hard to just start. For me at least. For you, or the next person, it might help in different/more ways.
Long story short, mild ADHD is a little hard to characterise, because at the "mild" end, there can be a bunch of other factors making you distractible/unmotivated (health, diet, relationships, job dissatisfaction etc).
If you're in any doubt, just go start a conversation with your doctor and go from there. If you're trying to spot specific behaviours, look at the number of unfinished or abandoned "pet projects", degree of procrastination, poor impulse control... those were the red flags for me. Your mileage may vary.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with your brain not being “on?”
#33'I feel like if my job were just to cut wood in the forest all day, then I'd be golden.' I imagine there is a guy cutting wood somewhere right now, thinking the exact opposite?
Yes, and? People are different. There are Europeans who dream of living in the US, and Americans who dream of living in Europe. There are short people who wish to be taller and tall people who wish to be shorter.
I think you missed the point? We have a saying in the UK that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
In other words, you may think some other job would be a lot easier or more enjoyable until you are doing that exact job everyday and dreaming of doing something else for a living.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with your brain not being “on?”
#34it’s easy to change jobs into exactly the same job. if so, nothing actually changed. try to find a way to work on things you’re actually interested in and excited to work on. you should wake up excited to play in the problem space. if you are able to, be open to moving and taking a paycut if it makes it easier to access interesting problems.
>try to find a way to work on things you’re actually interested in and excited to work on. you should wake up excited to play in the problem space. This is how I recovered from burnout. That and taking a few years off.
Did you have to explain a resume gap? How did you do it?