Hacking ADHD: Strategies for the modern developer

What do you mean by "natural or within range of possibility"?

One is consistent by doing, not by feeling (of course feelings have their own place in life). I don't enjoy going to the gym per se. I let go of that and go. I don't go because I feel happy and motivated before exercise. First, I went because people for thousands of years have saying so, and biologically it makes sense. Then, because I know how I feel in the short and long term after the exercise.

I do different sports for enjoyment and different for keeping in shape of course. I love hiking but going to a gym is more sustainable as a regular way of keeping in shape in all seasons and weather.

ADHD is diagnosed based on symptoms, not based on physiological signs. Like most diagnoses, it's a co-occurring set of traits we'de decided is outside of what's normal.

Just reading that made me feel the presence of 'bliss' :)

I think the pop-culture definition of ADHD has shifted a lot. In the past, being able to focus well (as you described in a different environment) would have been a sign that the issue was more environmental in nature, not a sign of clinical ADHD. Patients with ADHD struggled everywhere, even in distraction-free environments like a quiet library or quiet test taking environment.

Now, the pop-culture understanding of ADHD has shifted so far that we don’t bat an eye at declaring ADHD even when someone is operating under a constant barrage of environmental distractions. To be clear, someone with ADHD will have an even harder time resisting impulses to seek out distractions, but the fact that someone can focus just fine when their environment is minimally structured to keep distractions at a reasonable level would suggest that person doesn’t have classic ADHD.

> I think ADHD is the new norm.

I think this is my problem with the current pop-culture definition of ADHD: When the definition shifts so much that it becomes the “norm”, we’ve lost the plot. Something isn’t really a disorder if it’s “the norm”.

There’s a secondary problem I’ve been noticing in a subset of the young people I’ve worked with: Some of them self-diagnose with ADHD or get a doctor’s diagnosis, then mistakenly think that their ADHD diagnosis is an excuse for everything. I’ve had far too many conversations where I had to gently explain to juniors (via a volunteer mentor program, not as their boss) that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn’t mean that deadlines don’t apply them, or that they get a free pass for being late to meetings, or that they’re still obligated to perform at the level of their peers at work. Some of them have grown up in an environment where ADHD students get extra time to take tests, which some of them assume should translate to more forgiving expectations at work. It’s difficult to get some of them to accept that having ADHD means they need more accountability and oversight, not less.

I think we’re making a huge mistake by normalizing ADHD to the point that people think it’s the norm or that everyone has it because they surround themselves with distractions. Anecdotally, I’ve seen too many young people self-diagnose with ADHD and then actually spend less effort to curtail distractions, train their focus, and work on self-improvement. There’s something about becoming convinced that your behaviors are a medical condition that is out of your control (many erroneously declare they have a “dopamine deficiency” or similar misunderstandings of the science) that can give people a false sense that they either can’t improve their situation or that they shouldn’t be held responsible because it’s a labeled medical condition.

I don’t know where we go from here, but I can say it’s been an uphill battle to get recent mentoring cohorts to accept that attention is something they can improve with practice or even that they need to do things like silence phone notifications while they work.

I’m often stunned when I screen share with someone who has a non-stop stream of unimportant notifications in the top right corner, who later laments that they just can’t focus on anything for someone.

All kids are different. Some kids can sit and read for hours. But some kids need to do physical stuff. Schools don’t cater for the latter. Gone are the days of learning wood work and metal work, cooking, sewing. Kids don’t do PE class like they used to. We try to ram all kids through the same meat grinder and when one resists we try to dumb them down with drugs and force them through. These kids are probably WORSE off being on drugs and shoved through the meat grinder than had they dropped out and done a trade skill instead. Nope it’s adhd and we got to drug them up and in most cases it’s a visit to the doctor and “do you have adhd” “I think so” “good enough for me here take this drug that I get paid to prescribe you”