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The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

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Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#101

Post by swader999 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #76
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #59

This is where remote work goes off the rails, but then it’s wild how intentionally isolating the implementation of RTO that many large corporations are doing now. They line people up in rows, put headphones on their heads and wire them up to Teams and Jira to spend the whole day in isolation. Because taking a walk to another floor of building to talk to someone like a normal human being is too wasteful, but somehow f…

Working in an open office on cool stuff with legitimate friends was the best work experience I've ever had by far. Most days it didn't even feel like work. Now I wfh full time with people who are just coworkers and I'm miserable.

Volunteer for something your interested in locally on the side. It's the only way I stay sane.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#102

Post by darkwater »

suzzer99 wrote: post #76
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #59

This is where remote work goes off the rails, but then it’s wild how intentionally isolating the implementation of RTO that many large corporations are doing now. They line people up in rows, put headphones on their heads and wire them up to Teams and Jira to spend the whole day in isolation. Because taking a walk to another floor of building to talk to someone like a normal human being is too wasteful, but somehow f…

Working in an open office on cool stuff with legitimate friends was the best work experience I've ever had by far. Most days it didn't even feel like work. Now I wfh full time with people who are just coworkers and I'm miserable.

Bingo if you are in your late 20s or early 30s. But then life and priorities change...

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#103

Post by AbstractH24 »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #59

This is where remote work goes off the rails, but then it’s wild how intentionally isolating the implementation of RTO that many large corporations are doing now. They line people up in rows, put headphones on their heads and wire them up to Teams and Jira to spend the whole day in isolation. Because taking a walk to another floor of building to talk to someone like a normal human being is too wasteful, but somehow f…

As much as I dislike the isolation of WFH, particularly since leaving the job I had pre-2020 that began in office and started doing fractional work at fully remote companies, I keep reminding myself that offices aren’t what they used to be.

Also, the kind of relationships I had in office as a 25 year old grinding it out on a sales floor aren’t going to be the ones I’d find as a 35 year old in revenue operations.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#104

Post by bentt »

I find coworking spaces with other people around hits on thos effect. You don’t even have to be near the people, just in the same area.

And on the flip side, it seems there is no remote way of getting the same feeling. Even having my business partner on Discord doesn’t really do it. He doesn’t feel like he is parallel working as much as TOO close in that case.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#105

Post by darkwater »

lurkshark wrote: post #28
rpgwaiter wrote: post #21

I’m sure this works for some people. Personally I loathe social interaction of any kind, and mixing that with engineering gets me to my mental/emotional limits much faster. On my own I can work about 2 hours on and 10 mins off, sometimes for 10+ hours total. If I have a 2 hour collab coding call, that’s about all I’ll do that’s productive that day. I’l literally have to spend the rest of that day mentally recovering…

Whenever I read about pair programming as a standard technique (like XP) it sounds so great in theory but in practice I find it extremely draining whenever I’ve dabbled.

In general I agree but with a caveat: for me it's draining when there is a big difference in thought speed/way of thinking between me and my peer. If I'm with someone "on the same page" we can achieve awesome results, but if OTOH I have to explain why my brain just jumped to that other part, give context etc this is terribly draining for me as well, and after a 2 hours session I'm out for 2-3 hours when I need to recharge.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#106

Post by AbstractH24 »

pydry wrote: post #79
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #59

This is where remote work goes off the rails, but then it’s wild how intentionally isolating the implementation of RTO that many large corporations are doing now. They line people up in rows, put headphones on their heads and wire them up to Teams and Jira to spend the whole day in isolation. Because taking a walk to another floor of building to talk to someone like a normal human being is too wasteful, but somehow f…

It's about maintaining a feeling of control, it's not about collaboration. Thats just the lie they tell to RTO. Ive worked in: 1) collaborative in office 2) uncollaborative in office 3) collaborative wfh 4) uncollaborative wfh Personally i found 4 to be the most tortuous (because of ADHD), but 2 isnt much better. 1 and 3 i think are roughly equally good while you're there but wfh has so many ancillary benefits like n…

The trouble with 3 is that while achievable, it requires an incredibly high degree of intentionality and strong leadership.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#107

Post by AbstractH24 »

01100011 wrote: post #42
onemoresoop wrote: post #32

I may have ADHD, I never went for a diagnosis and found body doubling useful at times, especially when I was in school some decades ago, back then I had no name for it. However, I find white noise very helpful with staying on the task and with increased focus. My company moved, about a year ago, into a very cramped office that is also extremely noisy. This exasperated me, I would get drained of energy in a couple of…

Beyond type II bipolar, I don't have a diagnosis for anything psychological but I'm pretty sure I have ADHD with a touch of Asperger's(based mostly on a review of my behaviors over the past 50 years). But yeah I've found "smoothed brown noise" to work wonders. I also had some success with wearing a snug fitting balaclava. It's odd, but it worked. Nicotine helped, but I now have NAFLD and nicotine might be a factor in…

> Beyond type II bipolar, I don't have a diagnosis for anything psychological

The word “beyond” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence (I say as someone with the same diagnosis)

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#108

Post by AbstractH24 »

lemming wrote: post #6

An online application of this principle is Focusmate, where you schedule calls with essentially random strangers and just work together. There's very little chit chat and it's not some weird front for a hookup scheme. I've been amazed at how well it works for me. I can't really explain why, after all the other person can't see my screen so I could just be doom scrolling YouTube the whole time, but for some reason I d…

I’ve used focusmate on and off. Need to use it more.

It’s not perfect for keeping me on task, but does at least keep me at my desk.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#109

Post by Tade0 »

My most productive period within the last 12 months was when I rented a desk in a co-working space for the summer so that I could catch up with a friend who also went there.

To me it was less his mere presence and more the ability to immediately share any thoughts that would occur to me. Also air conditioning.

Same goes with chores - I would much rather have someone be in the same room while I e.g. do the dishes or cook.

I also noticed that if I don't have anyone close, I start talking to myself.

That sounds like a strong argument for working from the office and it is, but to me it doesn't outweigh the disadvantages. For one I could pull this off only because my commute was short thanks to it being vacation season, so traffic was way smaller than normal.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#110

Post by viraptor »

N2yhWNXQN3k9 wrote: post #15
viraptor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I severely question anecdotes that pair programming does anything other than motivate you to not look like a moron wasting time in front of someone else So... you're basically saying it works? Because that's what it does in practice. The other person is the external motivator for keeping attention on the task. > you might be surprised how much worse it gets later in life, especially if you have been taking them sin…

> So... you're basically saying it works? Working under pressure isn't a viable therapy, IMO. In my experience, it is a path to burn out and diminishing returns. > Got any support for that? Anecdotally, ~25 years of eating them, but there is plenty of evidence that prolonged use of amphetamine causes structural neuronal changes, even at therapeutic doses. Here is one article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38665308/…

> Working under pressure isn't a viable therapy,

None of ADHD related stuff is really therapy. We only know how to manage symptoms for now.

> Anecdotally

Yeah...

> prolonged use of amphetamine causes structural neuronal changes

Sure. But is it worse than unmanaged ADHD which also results in brain changes over time?

> What papers? What do they say?

It's a whole category, but you could start with this collection:

https://www.connectedpapers.com/main/00e762a8efd5581c93afcb8...

Every time ADHD coaching is mentioned, part of that process is learning planning ahead for distractions, part is learning to externalise reminders / triggers and hacking the reward functions. Maybe there's some paper which tests each of those in isolation, but I'm not going to dig that deep. In aggregate, ADHD coaching has positive results. Pairing is an extreme version of one part of it.

> Also, fear (an external motivator)

Pairing with others shouldn't involve fear. It's just two people being able to share and communicate the motivation to initiate the next step / question. If it causes you actual stress, either you're doing it with a wrong person, or it may just not be for you.

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