Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I Run a Company with ADHD

andrewaskins.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 515 posts

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#361

Post by wahern »

bridanp wrote: post #349
jordanbeiber wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me personally, no. But having had an intake of decent energy during the day, and a 30 min run in the evening allows my brain to brush the teeth and put three beasts to bed at night without collapsing into apathy. I have to constantly interrupt what I’m doing during the day and “check the sensors” so to speak. Hands up if you’ve been so consumed you missed lunch more than one instance this last month! Keep doing t…

Hands up to that! It totally aggravates my wife that I can just forget about lunchtime or dinner or whatever meal is coming next because I've become so involved in something. Right now is the worst. I made a list of work I need to do today, but none of it was very stimulating. So I opened up Hacker News, saw this article, and have been on this for close to an hour now. In that time, I've read it and a lot of comments…

> I have to attend 3 meetings in a row where I'm listening and not speaking. If you are ADHD, you know how that's going to go.

So about 30 minutes of active listening and 150 minutes of some of the deepest problem solving time where you can miraculously focus on all the problems you couldn't before? (The hard part is if somebody talks directly to you during the latter and not the former. You'll never know, though, unless somebody tells you about it later.)

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#362

Post by avip »

vanderZwan wrote: post #348
avip wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so in this case? What it "usually" means seems irrelevant. Have you been through a diagnosis with your kids?

I think you fail to realize that the burden of proof is not on me here.

The burden of proof falls on the one making the non trivial claim. I don’t need to prove the null hypothesis.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#363

Post by smileybarry »

manigandham wrote: post #192

I create a todo list with only 1 thing showing. I either skip it or work on it but there's only ever 1 thing. If I drift off, I look at that again every 10 mins (via alert) and get back on track. It's the only thing I've found that keeps me reigned in to a single task and grinding down the work instead of wasting away hours.

I do a similar thing: my work PC's todo list is a few tasks (with maybe a line of detail on some tasks), but my calendar has a daily repeating all-day "reminder" titled the current meta-task. That way whenever I glance at my phone it's enough to send me back on track.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#364

Post by falcolas »

zaarn wrote: post #274
INTPenis wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that but just because someone diagnosed you at 6 doesn't mean I believe it's right to medicate a child that early. If you could do it all over again, would you have waited until you were grown before you took medication?

I would have preferred to be medicated with 6 rather than 14, which is when I started medication for ADHD.

I wouldn’t have flunked half as many classes, nor taken 15 years to get into my career of choice, had I been diagnosed and treated at 6, and not 36.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#365

Post by ddxxdd »

internet_user wrote: post #72
colechristensen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read The Selfish Gene and https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2008/06/12/... There is doubt that a set of behaviors which is so prevalent in the population is just an accident and a disease. Evolutionary pressures exist to optimize gene expression ratios in a population. Put differently, when a certain gene becomes rare in a population individuals with that gene have a significant advantage in life and r…

Nonsense. We have all kinds of highly prevalent maladaptive traits. Evolution is blind.

Genetic mutations are blind. Natural selection is its walking stick.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#366

Post by falcolas »

avip wrote: post #275
hajhatten wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to think this, as is thinking people with depression just need to pick themselves up. If you've lived with someone that actually has ADHD you'll have another opinion.

There is obvious over-diagnosis with ADHD (and related) conditions. Every parent knows that. I don't think it's an "opinion" at this point. I can factually get all my kids diagnosed with ADHD if I choose to. The first victims of the situation are kids with "actual ADHD", whose problems are trivialized.

It is estimated by psychologists who specialize in ADHD that 5% of the population has ADHD. 4% of children are diagnosed with ADHD. 2% of adults are diagnosed with ADHD.

That smells a lot more like under-diagnosis.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#367

Post by nickjj »

smileybarry wrote: post #339
nickjj wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can binge on a video game for hours and hours, with a singular, obsessive focus. Therefore, no attention problem, right? (WRONG!) Can you elaborate on that? Why is it wrong? I've thought about this topic a lot in the past. I remember back in the day I had massive gaming sessions (like 10 hours a day for weeks). Games that are competitive and "skillful" too, not just lounging around playing them 1 handed. It require…

> I remember back in the day I had massive gaming sessions (like 10 hours a day for weeks). Games that are competitive and "skillful" too, not just lounging around playing them 1 handed. It required tremendous focus. It's deceptive; from the outside games seem like a single task that you can just focus on, unlike those other single tasks. But games are usually made up of a lot of things to keep track of, remember, et…

Those are all totally valid points (and I 100% agree) but don't you do the same thing when coding a project?

You have writing docs, writing tests, working on the user auth work flow / any app features, researching features / inspiration, designing a page, writing a bit of CSS, tinkering with the ops side of things (deployment / infra code), thinking about how you're going to generate traffic to it, writing blog posts or making videos surrounding your project idea and the list goes on.

You could bounce around all of that and could think "ok, what's next?" after completing any one of those things but for some reason it's not the same.

Although I guess another difference is games tend to have a lot of immediate rewards, or even more strongly, "potential" rewards. Like in your PvE MMO example. There's always a chance something might drop that will make your character better. Especially useful in games like path of exile (action RPG where your items / loot play a big factor) and even if the items you want don't drop, you're still gaining experience to level up your character which gives you ancillary rewards, and since it's a multiplayer game you could trade them with other people for things you want in return.

Where as with the coding project, there's really no rewards until it's done and even then there's no guarantee. You have to be content with just patting yourself on the back with a "hey good job, you finished writing tests for the user sign up work flow, now move onto X".

The same thing applies to writing to a lesser extent. There's research, coming up with a good example, writing sections / paragraphs, creating associated images, etc.. None of that really has immediate effects until it's fully done and you publish it, and even then, the publishing aspect might not even be the thing that motivates you to write it. Like, I've written 230ish blog posts but I write them with 0 expectations. I write them because they help me materialize what I'm learning or have learned, but sometimes it's difficult to write even if I think to myself that I want to.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#368

Post by thecatspaw »

smileybarry wrote: post #356
thecatspaw wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't forget sleepless nights if you took it after 11 am or later. Medication that keeps you awake for 16 hours leads to sleepless nights if taken late into the day, more news at 2.

Depends on the dosage, while he mentioned Adderall those are the exact side-effects I had with Ritalin, and that comes in all forms: "normal" (4 hours), long-last (8 hours), slow-release (also 8 hours-ish, different chemical implementation), and more I don't remember/know. The shorter durations (4 hours) are more effective than the longer, but also require taking it several times a day. And I think neither 4 nor the…

True, 16 hours was over the top. I think my concerta bottle (methylphenidate, same ingredient as ritalin but extended release) says something around 12 hours.

My point however was that if you take medication which can keep you awake for X hours less than X hours before bed, you could have a bad time.

> Occasionally I'd even get the side effect of making me drowsy, and I had to take a nap right there.

I've read about this, for some taking ritalin actually helps them sleep since it makes the brain shut up and be quiet, instead of racing all the time

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#369

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

nickjj wrote: post #332
SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I knew I was lazy And absent minded. And flighty. Thats why the homework never got done. Can binge on a video game for hours and hours, with a singular, obsessive focus. Therefore, no attention problem, right? (WRONG!) Talk to a doctor. Do be wary of the temptation to explain away all these failings that you presume are choices... thats always a very attractive scenario... but get a professional opinion.

> Can binge on a video game for hours and hours, with a singular, obsessive focus. Therefore, no attention problem, right? (WRONG!) Can you elaborate on that? Why is it wrong? I've thought about this topic a lot in the past. I remember back in the day I had massive gaming sessions (like 10 hours a day for weeks). Games that are competitive and "skillful" too, not just lounging around playing them 1 handed. It require…

Video games tend to be highly stimulating activities - many people with ADHD can keep their attention fixated on a singular activity, so long as that activity is stimulating enough. Video games, sports, or whatever.

Hyper-focus like that doesn't mean you have ADHD - but people often use it to rule out ADHD as a possibility, and never get tested, when maybe they should.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#370

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jordanbeiber wrote: post #187
vdwijngaert wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as I get the left border color of this button just right.

I was thinking, "as soon as I find the _perfect_ domain name". It could take a while. =)

How about some pun around "add" being adding a family and ADD. "justaddfamily"?
Post reply on HN