Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

It is a tool. It works well for people whose problems fall nicely into the toolkits that the therapy industry has evolved to treat. If this is run-of-the-mill ADHD, it can help. If it is something else, it might not.

Therapy can also peel away layers of problems. If you have a slew of problems, maybe therapy won't solve everything, but it will help you identify a few problems that you can fix, easing the burden to find other tools to solve the other problems. Some problems also have a multiplying effect on each other, so a partial solve of your concerns may make the rest livable.

I'd say if someone truly wants to improve their life, it is worth trying the tools available to them. If they work, great - if not, try something else.

I've started to implement the advice here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFL6qRIJZ_Y albeit too early to tell. He's pretty well credentialed though, so I trust on average the advice is good (but specifically for each individual YMMV)

One of his best points is dont act like or prescribe yourself ADHD solutions until you have a true diagnosis by an expert. Losing focus and distractions is commonplace for all people today, not just ADHD folks.

Once the time-blindness wears off, the anxiety sets in you realize hours have passed and outstanding work is due soon.

What sort of worked:

- Blocking web sites during work hours (SelfControl for MacOS and NextDNS for devices)

What did work:

- Consistent sleep schedule (10PM)

- Mindfulness meditation in the morning

- Getting physically active in the morning

- Working in a different environment

What helped on top of that:

- Getting prescribed for ADHD medication

- Professional counseling from a therapist

- Dealing with what’s causing your anxiety (or depression)

I wish you abundant storage redundancy.

I spent a few years working on a Support team, at least a couple of those years managing that team, and part of my job involved being interruptible with a very short response time, on several different channels (I mean email, IM, phone, etc.)

I liked that job as I met great people and learned a lot, but the moment I was able to shift into a more focused position (within the same company) I felt a great relief, an improvement in my quality of life, and a recovery of my cognitive skills. At that same company, I had (had because I no longer work there, we're still friends of course) a great friend, someone whom I know since we were 16 (We're 44 now), and he's the exact opposite and took the opposite path: He started off doing dev work, focusing on just a few tasks at a time, but it didn't work for him (even though he was amazing at his job) and ended up loving working as a support engineer. He thrives in an environment where he gets interrupted multiple times per hour (!!) during his work day, with no impact at all on his cognitive skills. In fact, not only is he a great problem solver, while dealing with multiple problems in parallel (and the interruptions include having to jump on a screen-sharing session without warning, something I can't tell you how much I feared and despised when I had to do that job!), he can tell you by heart the numbers of all the tickets he's working on, including their description and context. And I don't mean while working, I mean over beers at a meetup ...

The one thing we both agree on is that we love WFH and would never, ever go back to an office (he's been WFH pretty much all his life, while I've been doing that for 15 years now). And just as that is the case for us, I also know personally people who don't like WFH and need to go to an office every day in order to be productive and to feel a human connection with their coworkers.