Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

Going into a physical office with a professional middle manager.

I mean, assuming I find a place where I'm a good fit (meaning, my technical abilities make it worth the time of the middle manager to manage me) it works really well, because the job of the middle manager is, essentially, to make people like me work; Because I honestly want to be useful, I think that often said middle managers feel good about the whole thing, too, because I really do get more done under their guidance. They feel useful, I feel useful, etc...

The other thing is that I go through periods of strong productivity and of very weak productivity. This is... acceptable in industry. Ok, so you have some unemployed time, but that's okay because when you are really productive, the remuneration is pretty great.

Also, on the ADHD side? for me? this is after getting the medication. It helps... a lot. but I still benefit more from having a middle manager than most people do, I think.

Append: more on medicalizing your shit:

We live in an age where we spend a huge amount of our GDP on medical care. We have amazing solutions for a lot of problems. Take advantage of this, because when medical science has a good solution, it's often super easy and effective.

Sleep apnea, for instance, is easy to test for and easy to treat, and if it goes untreated? Really fucks up your attention span (and your cardiovascular system) It's one of those things where modern medical science has a quick, cheap and easy mechanical fix.

There's a bunch of other crap like that, too. I personally would go for the sleep apnea test before I messed around too much with medications; not that medications are bad, but if you have it, treating sleep apnea is an unalloyed good, (well, getting mask fit setup is... difficult, but that's mostly a matter of buying the masks and trying them; a small matter of money on a software dev salary) while most medications have pluses and minuses that need to be carefully weighed, even once you've found the one that is best for you.

It's all very nice that it makes you a lot of money, but if you are spending a third of your life doing something that you constantly have to force yourself to do, perhaps a different career.

- Changing my routine seems to kick off my ability to focus

- I have a sit-stand desk. Using it standing seems to help my focus, but changing between sitting and standing can bump my motivation.

- For clients starting and stopping a timer helps me focus.

- For clients and my own projects I use Pivotal Tracker to order tasks. It helps me break stuff down into smaller parts and to keep track of what I'm doing and helps me to avoid wondering what to do. I use it even though clients have their own project management solutions, I only use it for what I'm doing.

- I've never found rewards/punishments to be particularly effective.

- Unfortunately (because I'm from the North of England) I find that the better the weather the more motivation I have for just about everything.

edit I forgot to mention, fasting helps me focus too, even for long periods. Could just be the change of routine.

What I will say is that I've not cured what sounds very much like what you suffer from, just generated ways of dealing with it, more or less.

In the first summer that I couldn't get a coding internship (in college), I taught my friend who didn't have a coding background how to code. I taught my girlfriend at the time how to code. I started a meetup group and taught everyone I could. As they got better, I started to learn new things to teach. When I took on contract projects, I talked it over with my trusted friends and we solve the projects together. They were getting better through the projects I take up and my projects became a little more fun to work on.

Now, fast forward a few years, many of the people I taught are now senior software engineers. I still meet up with them a few times a week to talk about new coding patterns, discuss work projects, and help each other get better.

For me, the mindset shift I needed to do was to start thinking about how I can help others around me and make sure I'm helping them effectively.