No post body was provided.
Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
71–80 of 392 posts
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#72I got diagnosed a year ago.
Best resources I've found: https://adhdjesse.com/newsletter (this taught me about rejection sensitive dysphoria, ouch) and https://www.adhddd.com/anti-planner/
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#73Can you get used to just not checking things? disable the counter and notification icon on slack? I would have 20k unread emails just because the vast majority are not important at all. People lost their minds when they saw that and I reealized that it wasn't normal. I just did good work so I got away with a lot and my manager definitely gave me cover and reminded me of very important things. ofc that depends on having a solid manager
Same with slack messages. If it's not super important I learned to just not pay attention to it or get to it when I have nothing going on.
I know you already did this but I aggressively leave slack channels, especially the "fun" ones. I can see plenty of cats and boomer memes on the open internet, and showing up in the office once in a while pays way more social interaction dividends than the cheap virtual interactions on fun slack channels.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#74I work mostly with Engineering teams, and consider slack inbound a pathology. Slack is great for collab in places, but it’s not a strong way to manage inbound, IMO. The teams I’m responsible for make it easy for their stakeholder to raise issues, asks in a more deliberate, calmer way e.g. via GitHub issues or manager email. In exchange, we commit to mutually agreed response times on certain categories of business cri…
I'm curious about what you mean by "inbound". It sounds like messages from someone "outside" but not sure if that is probably a limited definition.
Inbound = something that requires a response/action. Could be an automated alert that creates a ticket, could be a slack message from someone asking for something.
If you're not great with it every message can feel like an inbound and you're compelled to go cycle through all the channels and read everything whether it's immediately relevant or not.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#75Not related to slack, but managing your ADHD symptoms. Look into a low oxalate diet, it really helped me and my children. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21911305/ https://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/articles-1/2015/11/13/... https://korunutrition.com/autism-low-oxalate-diet/ https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/vegetarianism-and...
All of these links are about autism, not ADHD. Am I missing something?
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#76I work mostly with Engineering teams, and consider slack inbound a pathology. Slack is great for collab in places, but it’s not a strong way to manage inbound, IMO. The teams I’m responsible for make it easy for their stakeholder to raise issues, asks in a more deliberate, calmer way e.g. via GitHub issues or manager email. In exchange, we commit to mutually agreed response times on certain categories of business cri…
I'm curious about what you mean by "inbound". It sounds like messages from someone "outside" but not sure if that is probably a limited definition.
I think the meaning of inbound here refers to work that is defined or asked of you or a team via Slack instead of via more thought-out and defined work.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#77Have you considered that you might just have a Slack problem? honestly. Labels can be dangerous and polarising - individual psychology and behaviour fall on a nuanced multidimensional spectrum, and I think these labels target such a large range and severity of behaviour that they have a high risk of conflating symptoms with completely different causes. Combined with misaligned intensives to sell drugs, I'm highly sce…
> Combined with misaligned intensives to sell drugs, I'm highly sceptical of the majority of diagnoses.
ADHD and executive disfunction are under-diagnosed rather than over-diagnosed (I have so many friends who have obvious undiagnosed adhd), mostly because of parents who think like you, or the classic "it does not exist, you're just a slacker, pharma is just trying to sell you some drugs". Most physicians who diagnose you don't make any significant additional money from selling you drugs.
> It's completely possible to exhibit "ADHD" symptoms from an unhealthy work life
Or maybe OP really has severe ADHD?
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#78I started using 4 virtual desktops to manage distractions many years ago and it’s worked wonderfully for me.
Desktop 1 is for chat, email, Spotify, and general web browsing.
Desktop 2 is for software development only, nowadays VSCode. A separate browser profile is used here and only for development related browsing (docs, stack overflow, live testing).
Desktop 3 is data and system administration. Remote terminals, Excel, database clients, and similar go here.
Desktop 4 is a catch-all. I use it for infrequent activity, like the occasional Photoshop, Word or vendor tooling.
I’ve used this same setup on Windows, OSX, and Linux for 15+ years. I always setup Alt-1,2,3,4 to switch and tweak the OS to remove all animations so it switches instantly.
I’ve found it much easier to stay in the zone this way.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#79Step 1 - turn off all notifications, noise and badges. This will allow you to not be disturbed by interruptions. Step 2 - if step 1 doesn’t work then shut slack down while working. Being reachable 100% of the time is insane. And the barrier for bugging is super low with Slack. Step 3 - if 2,3 don’t work then use something like dispatch.do to prioritize all the junk and filter out all the noise. Step 4 - it’s a you pr…
I would add: delete the slack app, and use it from a browser. Then you'll only get notifications when the browser is in the foreground. (Of course assuming you've disabled browser notifications). This way you can leave slack running, you will show up as available, but will not be disturbed unless the slack tab is in the foreground. (Or someone makes a call).
oh good point. someone should write an extension that only pings you based on critical rules, like if someone writes "bump", or "hey were you able to check on that?" or if 5 DMs have piled up, then it releases the notification. Honestly slack should do this themselves
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#80I work with a person who has ADHD and is also a fantastic colleague. After we first met the team structure changed in such a way that they were less confronted with most everybody in the department and more working in a more isolated environment. This person has flourished since, possibly as a result of this change.
I don't know what size company you work in, but based on the super scientific sample size of 1, asking for a transfer to a more isolated team may help.