Ask HN: How do programmers deal with ADD?

Former / occasional programmer here.

I was categorized as having ADD / ADHD and never bothered to take anything for it although it has caused me tremendous problems in my career and school life. If you know you have this problem you can either drug yourself into a coma or make significant life choices (and learn to master your condition) to steer you into career where your strengths come into play and your weaknesses are minimized. I tried both, I like the second option better.

I no longer believe there is something wrong with me, I believe society was built for people different than me (sit still, pay attention, do one thing at a time, obey etc) and I am expected to follow and obey their rules. I believe that ADHD is a real condition but the drugs are a false solution that are driven more by pharmaceutical company marketing than reality. If they can make you feel bad about who you are, they can sell more drugs. That is wrong - if you are unhappy its because something deeper is wrong in your life that you need to change and you should find what that is.

The Good:

There are massive benefits to being an ADD-er in my experience: I can simply handle more volume of work faster and more efficiently than anyone I know. My brain is a 40-lane highway and I have no problem multitasking across many different contexts. If my brain decides to become interested in a topic, I can learn everything there is to know about that topic faster than anyone...I now learn to recognize when something interests me and feed my brain information in that time slot while the opportunity presents itself (I think its called "hyperfocus"). I have learned to work with the peculiarities of my condition and take advantage when the wind is blowing in a useful direction.

It wasn't until later in my career that I learned to be extremely detail oriented.

The Bad:

The ADD super powers come with many downsides. I am chronically bored out of my mind and single-tasking is a challenge (e.g. sitting through a lecture or boring meeting). At most jobs I found myself growing completely bored in six months and being unable to focus on my job. This resulted in a lot of useless job hopping which I now recognize in retrospect as being a symptom of my underlying condition.

Learning material which doesn't interest me is impossible, killing my academic performance. I felt strongly that other people around me could simply absorb boring "stuff" without issue and just deal with it and take the pain while my brain simply turned off in that situation, remembering nothing.

Finally, I have difficulty communicating with people. When I talk I jump all over the place (often off topic) or I skip three steps ahead. Most people's brains don't work like this.

Some Solutions:

The most important fix was to find a job or career which, by definition, involved lots of crazy stuff going on all the time. Being a programmer working on a single product for years was simply impossible to me to sustain.

Many smaller, single-product, companies work like this: Here is the one thing you do for the next two years. If you have ADHD that isn't going to work.

Many developers I know (with more normal brains) prefer to focus on one technology (Say, Ruby on Rails) to the exclusion of everything else for years. I have embraced being a super-generalist.

If you are a programmer, I recommend finding one of the following: (a) an agency which has dozens of ongoing projects in many technologies (many digital agencies are like this) so you can never get bored (b) a large company with a lot of interesting stuff going on (e.g. take a company like Microsoft which has ridiculous amounts of different technologies, products and initiatives underway at any given time).

In my case I decided that software wasn't for me and found a related career (technical marketing) which was more varied in nature (lots of new products, unexpected surprises and events going on all the time).

I thought a large company would be horrible, I was wrong - My current job is like an endless "all you can eat" buffet where I am allowed to eat as much as I want and work on projects that interest me all day long. It probably depends which department you land in.

More Immediate Solutions and Strategies:

1.) Lose weight and exercise regularly.

This will physiologically change your body and brain and make it easier to sustain focus. Can't recommend going for a run regularly enough.

2.) Embrace a single page "Shit to do" list.

Everything you need to do should fit on a single page. I tried many different techniques for time management including any number of ToDo apps etc. Everything was less efficient than Evernote or notepad.

If I have something to do, it goes on the list. Then you can ignore it or check it once a day and cross stuff off. I used to be really bad about dropping tasks and forgetting details, now I am at 100% all the time.

3.) Build your entire life around Evernote

I now completely live in Evernote. Every meeting, everything gets an Evernote page that I can come back to. The really important stuff goes in Shit To Do.

I tend to multitask through every meeting and only have part of my brain in a listening state. I take notes for that meeting in Evernote and come back to them.

People with ADD suffer from "poor working memory" which means you forget things much faster than normal people. The cure is to rely on Everynote or some other method to store all the details for you. That way, you can get around the poor working memory issue by letting the computer do the remembering.

Caffeine and "forest therapy." Caffeine is only a stopgap. Impulsive feelings, I believe, are due to the body not getting something it wants like food, exercise, sleep, toilet, etc. Forest therapy is a two hour block of distraction free time for problem solving. The thing that's different is that the body needs to be doing something autonomously. Walking through the woods in a straight line for two hours is basically automatic. Why a forest? Line of sight is about 50 yards and sound is muffled. And it's pleasant.

You probably just dont want to do whatever you are trying to do, simple as that. Seriously, ask yourself whether, deep down, this is something you really 'want' to do, or its something you feel you 'have' to do (school? work?). This is a completely normal feeling.

Now comes the hard part - doing what you 'have' to do.

Few steps

0a. Get excited about what you 'have' to do - whether it be the learning aspect, the mastery of your work (craftsmanship), the purpose of your work (helping users, making money, etc)

0b. Think about what you are going to do, and write down some granular steps (key)

1. Get yourself to start by hook or crook, and remove absolutely all distractions you can find (spend the time doing this). Start the first step you did in 0b.

2. Work for an hour at least.

3. Feel a sense of accomplishment, pat yourself on the back for completing some work. Look back on the work you completed. The goal is to start 'feeling' a positive sense about doing work you 'have' to do, which will make it easier in the future to do more.

Starting is always the hardest part like anything. Once you get into a routine, it becomes much easier. The hardest part is converting feelings of pain / 'have to do' into feelings of 'want to do' or curiosity.

This is pretty scary. You just described me to a "T" (except the Evernote part - I use Onenote). I've been lucky enough however, to fall into jobs where I became the "tech lead" and as such, explore all sorts of new technologies and systems every day. But jeez, maybe I'm ADD. Appreciate the post!

It's me, too. I am craving a more "chaotic" multifaceted career and have been trying to make a change. But, who cares if some people created a term, ADD? Clearly, humans didn't evolve to sit in a chair in a quiet room doing the same thing all day. Do I have "ADD" when I'm running a massive event involving 200 participants with issues popping up all over the place, having to make quick decisions on my feet and managing people? Not even close. Do I have "ADD" when I'm sitting in an office doing rote paperwork tasks and answering the same email over and over again? Hell yes I do. And I don't see anything wrong with that. I see something wrong with those who think this is a "disorder." Which type of job sounds closer to how humans spent their days 50,000 years ago?

By the way, parent, you and I are probably all INTP or similar.

I'm done fighting it and being depressed about it and now embrace it. I'm glad I'm a generalist who would love nothing more than to try every job out there once and am hungry to learn about all the complex things out there.