Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

What works for me:

- reminding myself that my fear of missing out is misleading. Grounding myself in work and specific interests. Nothing bad will happen if I miss a hot new JS framework.

- that clears space for more introspection. Observing myself, what I spend time on exactly here, how and why.

- then, deprioritizing new shiny unimportant things from HN in my mind; I still look at new things outside my niche, but I try to prioritize looking at HN posts closer to my interests. It's also good because some of HN comments look deep and insightful, but are not actually accurate or objective. It takes some pre-existing knowledge to be able to tell that.

- sorting through the tabs, moving important ones to the left, to be able to close a ton of tabs on the right in one go without hesitation when needed. Tree Style Tabs for Firefox helps me make rabbit holes visually obvious and undig myself from them.

- getting into a habit of more self-awareness of why I spend time here, "do I get anything meaningful from this time?". If not, time spent in comments would be better spent reading the actual article or docs for this new thing.

- getting "no HN" time, when I consider even visiting it a bad thing (not in a shameful way, just "here we go again"). Practicing switching attention to something else, even if it's something silly (and hopefully not too engineered for grabbing my attention).

I tried modafinil a few times. I was never diagnosed with ADHD but I was describing to a friend basically exactly what OP said, mixed in with a lack of focus @ work. He suggested I try modafinil and gave me a bunch of his stash (along with some stronger things I wasn't as keen on). Taking some before I hopped on the tram meant it had started to take effect around the time I sat down and started work, and I felt remarkably more motivated and focussed during the following ~8 hours or so. It's a bit of a game-changer. I felt a little bit like the day whizzed past, and had a bit of trouble sleeping afterwards so I was sure never to use it more than a couple of days out of any given week.

I think it's of questionable legality here, but if you can get a doctor to prescribe it legally it's well worth looking into.

I haven't managed my ADHD very well in the last 2 years, my life is becoming a nightmare. But HN is less and less of a factor, I think my interests have somewhat diverged and I don't click that much anymore. Also, very often I see interesting stuff on the front page of HN that I have seen before somewhere else, which is probably not a good sign.

I like to joke that my dream is to one day be able to afford my own free time.

But you’re better off being excited about a lot and only having time for a little than the alternative. Getting excited about this stuff is the key to success in the field. That endless desire to learn is critical in a field where you need to constantly learn everyday.

Thanks for this. I ended up going down a rabbit hole after my post and found out that we now have something called 'Right to Choose' which is where you can ask your GP to refer you to a private practice.

From reading the ADHDUK subreddit it turns out it takes it down to under 6 weeks. Think I need to call my GP and have a conversation.