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Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

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Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#211

Post by 98codes »

I've come down to admitting to myself that there's a "now" pile and a "never" pile. Sometimes, the never pile items can graduate to now, but those events are often random or born from unforeseeable external events.

Projects that are not on my current short list of "need to know" things are added to the pile (added to Pocket with a tag of "checkthisout"), and I've decided to stop making myself feel badly for the list of things I never got to looking at.

Items that fall into into the "now" column are added to a separate text-based list that I actively look at and work thorough when I find myself with extra time.

What's truly "extra" time and not just time that should be spent on chores or honest-to-god downtime is an entirely different conversation.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#212

Post by z3c0 »

hollerith wrote: post #195
z3c0 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a very puritanical viewpoint. So much so, that it's a little peculiar and almost feels like a caricature. A life of avoidance does not help an ADHD brain, and the idea that your brain wants stuff to do is not the case at all. You will burn out very quickly going down that path. You'll get much further just taking a few times a day to slow your thoughts via meditation or engaging in a passive activity…

I think some people need to go very puritanical to survive and to succeed in the modern world with its almost-constant easy access to entertainments, distractions and mental stimulations. I'm probably one of them. And the meds I have tried typically prescribed for ADHD have done more harm than good. Specifically I've tried Ritalin, Adderal and modafinil. Actually that is not true: modafinil did more good than harm, a…

I'm not denying that some people have a harder time than others, but to restrict an ADHD brain is not unlike repressing a child. The "distractions" are only distractions to an orderly system - it does not imply that your brain is inherently disorderly, only that it doesn't mesh with the order defined by our society. Learning to reconcile the gap between your natural strengths as an ADHD individual and those needed to make it in the modern world will work far better than trying to shoehorn yourself into a set of rules that your brain refuses to comply with. Living without fulfillment will only further muddy the ADHD mind.

Medicine is a shortcut to that, but as you've already noted, it's a huge undertaking of trial-and-error, and may only amount to a transitory solution. Nonetheless, if it carries you forward even a little, it's a worthwhile endeavor.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#213

Post by hollerith »

thr717272 wrote: post #142

Alt account of long time HN reader/user here: But I admit that with my life circumstances (adhd, coming from a non wealthy family) and choices (active Christian, more than twice as many kids as the average around here) there will never be time. I deal with it all by storing it in raindrop (used to be pinboard.in but I finally got utterly fed up). I also have a bullet journal (ok, Logseq these days) where I have pages…

>I felt had an almost crippling addiction to HN, then since late February last year I have barely read HN

Can you say more? How did the invasion of Ukraine cause the ending of your HN addiction?

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#214

Post by osigurdson »

fipar wrote: post #206
osigurdson wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your friend in support engineering truly being interrupted however? I think it has a lot to do with stack depth. Working on task A, then being interrupted to work on task B only to be interrupted again to work on task C is the source of brain damage - particularly for those who care about being productive.

Yeah, he's working in an intense context-switching environment. Also, since he's a very senior team member he gets interrupted frequently for escalations or just for short help requests. The context-switching is what killed me when I did that, and he actually does enjoy it, as crazy as it sounds!

Well, I guess it is a good thing that there is more than one type of brain out there!

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#216

Post by osigurdson »

Buttons840 wrote: post #198
osigurdson wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your friend in support engineering truly being interrupted however? I think it has a lot to do with stack depth. Working on task A, then being interrupted to work on task B only to be interrupted again to work on task C is the source of brain damage - particularly for those who care about being productive.

"The cost of an interruption is not just the time it takes, but that it breaks the time on either side in half. You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they're unable to work on hard problems at all." -- PG

I (of course) think of it like multi-tasking in a computer. The machine needs to capture the context (stack and registers) associated with one task in order to switch to another. However, for a human this context can be enormous. Depending on the task, it is possible that one will never get back to the state of understanding that they had at an earlier point if working on a particularly complex thing - just the right combination of caffeine, sleep, motivation (more accurately gumption if you have read ZAMM), etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#217

Post by jredwards »

For starters, I use https://hckrnews.com/ and filter it down to the top ten articles.

Like many people with ADHD, I have a tendency to hyper-focus on things, and if I don't have something that I'm focused on I tend to get depressed. Over the years (a lot of years, self-awareness is not a strong suit), I've become more familiar with my patterns and tried to accommodate them and make healthy choices.

It's easy for me to hyper-focus on a series of novels and devour them and not feel too guilty (this is better for sleep). When I'm hyper-focused on a development project or a work problem, it tends to disrupt my sleep patterns more. When stuff like that happens I try to make a lot of notes about the things intruding on my thoughts, so that I can put them to rest for the night and not feel like I need to address them now.

Similarly, if a subject is really interesting and I don't want to lose track of it, I'll save all of the articles in Pocket and know that I can revisit the subject.

Lastly: I have kids and they do not care what you are interested in right now. They're great at pulling me away from what I'm absorbed in.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#218

Post by y-curious »

corobo wrote: post #116

If it'd take longer than 5 minutes or so to read the article I chuck it into Instapaper. From there I've got my instapaper feed in my RSS reader, I'll give them a read whenever I've got a spare moment.

Came here to say the same thing. Instapaper working so seamlessly with this site means I can read cool articles in bed, on my Kindle, later.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#219

Post by aidenn0 »

hidelooktropic wrote: post #88
BatteryMountain wrote: post #34

Pi Hole with my own blocklist. That is, I block all of my problem sites, then let someone else set my pihole password and then I delete my ssh key off the server. Then on the phone, remove all apps that allows consumption (social media, games, readers, youtube, even the browser). Debloat it with adb too. Switch off all notification except for your main chat app (like whatsapp) and alarms. If still too distracting, se…

I completely disagree about caffeine. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-does-caffeine-affect-people... "if you don't learn to focus it." this is nonsensical and harmful

What doesn't mix for me is caffeine and Focalin. When I'm not on Focalin, I can drink caffeine in moderation and feel fine. A single cup of coffee when I'm on Focalin, and I'm going to get so much less quality sleep that I feel like a wet dishrag in the morning.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#220

Post by ryloric »

z3c0 wrote: post #176
BatteryMountain wrote: post #34

Pi Hole with my own blocklist. That is, I block all of my problem sites, then let someone else set my pihole password and then I delete my ssh key off the server. Then on the phone, remove all apps that allows consumption (social media, games, readers, youtube, even the browser). Debloat it with adb too. Switch off all notification except for your main chat app (like whatsapp) and alarms. If still too distracting, se…

This seems like a very puritanical viewpoint. So much so, that it's a little peculiar and almost feels like a caricature. A life of avoidance does not help an ADHD brain, and the idea that your brain wants stuff to do is not the case at all. You will burn out very quickly going down that path. You'll get much further just taking a few times a day to slow your thoughts via meditation or engaging in a passive activity…

Unless you have it you don't know what it feels like. This sort of generic advice is useless when you're awake in bed at 8:30 AM, still trying to sleep from last night but you can't because you can't physically stop yourself from doom scrolling on your phone.

The only thing that really works is an unbreakable commitment device, make it so that the only thing you can do in any given situation is the right thing.

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