Ask HN: Senior Engineers with ADHD, any mental/physical structures for work?

[neo_optimus]

I recently got promoted to a senior position involving one of the top distributed system projects in the world. The journey till here was very strenuous for myself, and the next level seems very difficult to reach without better mental structures in place. Even becoming a senior required putting in a lot of extra effort in my day to day activities so that I can barely achieve all objectives by the deadline, compared to my teammates with a similar workload. Because of my executive dysfunction, I'm having a hard time with the following things and I need to put in extra effort (on order of multiple hours everyday). It took me many, many months to develop simple planning and organization abilities, for eg. planning for the day at a granularity that doesn't overwhelm me and yet provide me a good enough overview of tasks so that I don't miss out on anything.

1. Tracking multiple small work items, especially the tail end work items that are inherently boring: As a mid level engineer when I was working on a maximum of couple of work items, it was easier to focus on them and track deployments, follow ups with others etc. It becomes exponentially tougher for me once it goes beyond 2 work items.

2. Understanding a mature big project in detail: I have always been able to efficiently work on projects that require working from ground up as they provided extra motivation. I can even handle medium size projects as I can work with a few unknowns. But for huge projects spanning teams worth 100s of team members, it becomes overwhelmingly difficult to focus on my subproject without trying to understand everything it touches upon. Maybe it's a result of perfectionist tendencies, maybe it's because I have problems starting work items with extremely limited amount of scope compared to the workings of the whole project. There are new terms, new things very slightly unrelated to my smaller project at hand that I don't know no matter how much I learn.

3. Relatively efficient multi tasking: Once I get started on any task, it takes a while for me to get going, and even after finishing it up, it takes a while to start on another task as well. I'm extremely efficient once I get into the zone and the task is a big enough unit that only I have to work on. But when the project involves interacting with multiple stakeholders in an async manner, it gets split into tens of small units requiring immense willpower to start and stop. If these units are not big enough, this results in lengthy procrastination times that ultimately reduces my productivity to 10% compared to when I'm working on a single big item by myself. This problem is easily avoidable at junior/mid level engineer, but at senior level these are prerequisite rather than a choice.

4. Acceptance with the nature of work: I have always loved Computer Science ever since I understood its basic concepts. I have worked at fintech companies where the work involved understanding and interacting with core C/C++ constructs and computer science fundamentals to extract the maximum execution speed to give that edge in trading, and that was immensely satisfying. But at senior level and above, most if not all software companies require work that's less research/depth in nature and more planning/organizing/breadth in nature. I have considered doing a MS/PhD but at the moment I want to continue evolving in the role I have.

I'm interested in any and all opinions/points of view here, ranging from "Use X technique/tool to help being organized/plan/etc." to "I struggled with similar issues, and here's how I cope/developed structures to help with this over the years".

[Mo3]

I assume you will get a lot of helpful tips here, and I too have successfully managed to cope for almost 30 years, but I have to honestly admit that getting on medication was the best thing that has ever happened to me. There is only so much you can do to alleviate a chemical imbalance.

My life has never been the same since I got on it. The first few days I had to cry a lot, it was so incredibly beautiful and liberating. It was.. quiet. No more dozens of thought streams at once. Thoughts suddenly had structure. Everything had structure. I could tap into the potential that had always been there, but had been inaccessible. I felt normal. I fixed up my whole life within a few months, organized it (which now even helps when I dont take the medication), took care of things that have been unfinished for years.

And that's only work and organization. My social skills went through the roof too. I started to be able to hold normal conversations, I could listen properly, I could reply properly, and any conversations I have have become just so much more deep and meaningful. My depression and anxiety have vanished completely, for they were only a symptom of the ADD too. I eat better, I sleep better, my apartment is clean. I'm happier and healthier than I've ever been.

There is no real alternative. You can decide to keep on coping, but at some point you really have to ask yourself if you want to make everything harder on yourself than it has to be.

[sph]

Hear, hear. I tried to make it work without medication - to be honest I didn't even know I had ADHD - and all that resulted was complete burnout, depression and self loathing at being unable to accomplish more. I had just enough energy to pull through the working day and not much else.

The medication has freed me. It has removed the ball and chain from my brain. It has saved my career and is pulling me out of a lifetime of coping mechanisms.

Now I just need a notepad and a TODO list, which I use religiously to keep track of everything. Previously todo lists were a fad for me that I wasn't able to keep up with for more than a week.

[doodle323]

I am just starting to look for treatment. If you don't mind sharing, which medication works best for you?

[dominotw]

NZT?

[estevaoam]

I was diagnosed with somewhat severe ADHD, hyperactive and attention subtype. I have few tips to share:

1. Find your medication. After I found mine with the correct dosage, my life improved ten fold. Our dopamine system is wired differently and medication is the basis of treatment to cope with it.

2. Externalize everything: thoughts, events, planning, even your life’s values if you feel like it. Write it all down and build the discipline to keep those updated. Use todo-lists for everything. The poor executive functions we experience can be compensated by externalizing everything, so always organize your thoughts in a notepad. I use NotePlan mac/iOS app and highly recommend to check it out.

3. A lesser commonly known part of being ADHD is that it can also cause emotional unbalance. We can get overwhelmed, overexcited and overanxious easily. Keep awareness of your emotions. Again, write them down.

4. SLOW DOWN. Especially if you are also hyperactive. Try to think and react more slowly to the world around you. Give time for things to sink in your head before taking action.

5. Last but not least: be kind to yourself. You can’t always do everything perfectly. Mistakes are going to happen and that’s normal for everyone. Focus on improving yourself a little everyday and enjoy the present.

If you haven’t seen this video yet, it explains better and in much more detail: https://youtu.be/sPFmKu2S5XY

[gazby]

This could not more perfectly reflect my experience had I written it myself. I was diagnosed with (also quite severe) ADHD recently, and it seems it was a surprise to literally no one but me. A solid third of the people I've discussed it with had assumed I knew and just wasn't well treated.

Even though it's number 1, I do want to emphasize it for those who are reluctant. Finding an effective medication has been one of the most net-positive personal changes I've ever experienced. And if it isn't for you, there's no harm is simply stopping :)

Edit: I should have kept reading, Mo3 sums up my contribution here much better lol

[annie_muss]

I suffer from ADHD. I'm not sure my advice is a good fit for your specific situation, but these are some things that I think are helpful.

1. Get your health/medication on point. Find out what medication works for your and take it consistently. You can't afford to lose out on the extra executive function good medication can give you.

2. Accept your ADHD. Flagellating yourself for missed deadlines, forgotten tasks, procrastination and so on will only make things worse. I used to beat myself up about procrastination and it led to a cycle of anxiety that only made things worse. If you have a low productivity day accept it. Take each new day, each new project and each new task as completely fresh an isolated.

3. Record yourself working. Use a camera or a screen recorder. Try to notice exactly what happens. Do you start a task and then procrastinate? Do you procrastinate before the task starts? What triggers it? Is it internal? External? It can feel like you know what is triggering things but getting an actual recording can show you things you would have never noticed in the moment.

4. Inject novelty into boring tasks. Often simple boring tasks don't have enough excitement to make them interesting. Counterintuitively, making a task more difficult can add novelty and help stop you procrastinating. What adds novelty and challenge will be very individual.

5. Make peace with that fact that some techniques will stop working for you and you will need to change how you work. Just because something was working great last week doesn't mean it will work this week.

Good luck!

[JimBlackwood]

Point three is great! To add my own experience; I often got distracted when a task seemed “too hard”. Out of a fear of failure I didn’t start the task but due to ADD or whatever I never realised it was anxiety that was causing it.

Knowing certain ‘triggers’ can help you prevent distractions. For me simply the realisation was enough to improve it.

[renewiltord]

1. I use Adderall, cycle with Caffeine, with days on neither to prevent dependence.

2. I use Google Tasks and stick everything there obsessively. Some tasks are higher overhead to track than to execute, but not having to make the track/just-execute distinction enables more execution because of how ADHD works for me (choice making induces task avoidance)

3. I have a daily meeting at 0830 where I execute a daily tasks list. Here's the first few lines:

    Recruiting platform checks

      Greenhouse:

       Screen current candidates

       Review scorecards

       Review Application Review

     Write 3 objectives for the day

     Clear all Gmail inbox

     One off tasks

      Review task deadlines

       On Recruiting Board

       On Engineering Board

     Do all immediately due tasks

In my case, all of my behaviour got worse after I had a bad car accident so I've been forced to use all this machinery. I still get the desire to work and stuff like that but I get some sort of physiological fear-response for things that appear big but just need to be done.

This is problematic for someone in my position, so I just use the tools to deal with them and I'm able to fairly performant, though it probably sounds silly to many people who are able to task-dispatch much more easily.

[bin_bash]

I had to quit Adderall, it made me an awful dad and husband too anxious to do anything other than work and I was only able to work on specific things. I was never able to focus generally on any particular thing with it. I’m on Strattera but it’s only 10 days in and it takes several weeks to kick in.

I go to the coffee shop and do 3 15-minute Pomodoros every morning. The combination of being at a dedicated place, limiting the work I have to do, and having a stimulant works reasonably well for me.

It’s amazing what you can get done in 45 minutes if you really focus. I struggle to write much—if any—code outside of that window. The rest of my day is chat, email, docs (reading or writing), or making simple one or two line fixes.

I was diagnosed in like the second grade and have struggled throughout my life. I’m in my mid-30s now.

[maxpowersage]

Thanks to the farm bill, you can look into using cbd gummies to offset the anxiety from dopamine agonists and sdris like adderol/Concerta respectively at a very small iq cost. Find a DO since they are more open to alternative medicine.

[ktaylora]

I've had to work through ADHD as an engineer and echo what a few folks on here have said about slowing down and being intentional. It's easy to get overwhelmed when you have a to-do list with 25 things on it and you feel like you need to do all of them on your own or the project will fail.

People with ADHD are conditioned to expect that the projects they take on will fail if they do not put in 150% effort. I was this way in school. At work, it should not look like this. You should tend your to-do lists and deligate to your junior and mid-level devs wherever you can. Put them to work on implementation and focus on the high level stuff or fill in the gaps on things that they can't do.

On a personal level, take up meditation. This speaks to training your brain how to slow down and focus. 20 minutes a day of shutting your brain off and just sitting will make the world of difference. Lean on your medication if you need it. It really does make a difference, but it can introduce some behavioral changes that are not ideal if taken for years (for me, it induced manic depression).

[eyelidlessness]

The best advice I can give you is what I wish I could have told myself over the last decade: your expectations of yourself are higher than anyone can reasonably expect of you, be very cautious of burnout, counter any self doubt with the knowledge that your talent is already seen and proven, and rest.

You're already qualified to do the work or you wouldn’t be recognized for it. You don’t need to do more. Getting a promotion is a formal acknowledgment of work you already do! This is your chance to be rewarded for it and relax.

Congratulations, also, are in order. It’s really tough for us to thrive with this kind of anxiety and pressure. Reward yourself. Take a vacation if it helps. And keep doing the things you’ve found rewarding and successful.

[vanjajaja1]

1. I use Quiver.app to plan my week/day and to track what i'm working on right now in the moment. Any intermediate output from my work gets tracked (eg. preparing important commands, saving output of important commands) and any little task that pops up gets added to an impromptu to-do list. This keeps me focussed and stops me forgetting my place in what I'm working on in case I get distracted. At the end of the day/week I ruthlessly evaluate what must be carried over and what can spill on.

2. Learn to offload work to juniors. Create tickets and dump them in your backlog. Work with your manager to make sure that "work that is not an efficient use of my time" gets handled my someone else. Anything that drains your energy or seems tedious and can be a learning opportunity for a junior. Use your 'procrastination' as a signal that whatever you're working on should be assigned to someone else.

[asimjalis]

Do you have a link to this quiver.app?

[maxpowersage]

Get a galaxy note based smartphone--you need to get notes and have something you will always have with you to get task notes to feed into your system. Star items that are action items for you. Get a smart watch. The only feature you require here is for it to buzz. You will turn your phone on silent for meetings and miss your task tracking cues so the watch will fix that. Get a private Kanban board and share that with your task lead. Use jira or the like to track your team/reports status. Get access to your project plan. You are trying to create a sense of urgency externally since your prefrontal cortex isn't maintaining task salience/has time blindness. Make sure to get buy in from your task lead. If you have issues with this, request it as a reasonable accommodation, assuming you live in a country that protects disability rights. Set frequent alarms. Set aside time cued by these alarms to a) review your task notes and cross their stars off when you complete or get them into a tracking system. b) review your tracking systems to remind yourself of all the work you/your team must complete. Get a neurologist or your family doctor to prescribe a stimulant style medicine if you can tolerate it first, then look at other options. You need dopamine going to your prefrontal cortex to maintain task salience first and foremost. Your tools and processes are externalizing your executive function. No joke, watch all of Barkley's vids. I have successfully lead teams of up to 20 and teams of teams with these accomodations. They also help with IC tasks to keep me on track for heads down, help the team time.

[maxpowersage]

Also, conserve your executive function by taking life short cuts. Let go of trying to help the environment and use paper plates, plastic cups, and forks--it sucks, but you need this buffer. Prepared food are your friend.. Use melatonin to get regular scheduled sleep. Limit your pets to low maintenance like cats/fish if you can. Pay as many of your bills automatically, if you can. Set up your medicine/supplement stack at the beginning of the week with those tiny dollar store plastic tupperware containers,2x1x1 ish inches. All day brain focus has a couple of good supplements like phosphatidlserine/choline and dmae. Look into racetams if you can find them. Make sure you are getting enough b12 and d3. Look at patches, Creams. or shots if you don't absorb b12 well. Your doctor can help with everything except some nootropics unless you live in a country where racetams are prescription--in which case I envy you.

[BlameKaneda]

- I use ToDoist as a browser extension and a phone app, and it's very satisfying to check off items. I also maintain quick ToDo lists on Post-It notes and a white board.

- I'd recommend anyone to do this (using the same app or another one), but I use Obsidian.md for notes. I'll create a page for each Jira ticket that I'm working on, where I'll include personal notes about things I've noticed (e.g. "When passing in this object I get X result") as well as Q's that I have and any answers that I've been given.

- I use the LeechBlock extension to block certain websites between certain times of the day, including HackerNews and LinkedIn (the latter is a huge rabbit hole for me). Link: https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/

- I've got noise-cancelling headphones. There's a lot of sirens and honking horns outside of my place and they do a great job at blocking those things.

- If I'm really distracted, I'll move my phone to the other side of the room so it's out of sight.

- I started seeing a psychiatrist in late-January and started taking Vyvanse as a result. At first (lower dosages) I didn't notice a lot of differences, but there was one day to where I didn't take Vyvanse---I was on 40mg and went to pick up my prescription the next day. I was shocked at how much harder it was for me to focus and get stuff done. I asked myself, "Is this what it was like pre-Vyvanse?" Out of all of the items on this list, starting on Vyvanse was probably the most effective thing.

- I got a standing desk a month ago and stand during meetings. Not only is it a bit easier for me to focus, but I'm also getting my money's worth :)

[sysadm1n]

> most if not all software companies require work that's less research/depth in nature and more planning/organizing/breadth in nature

I wish I could say just pick the work that is more R&D in nature and avoid 'secretary' work, but you obviously don't have that choice. Personally I love anything along the lines of Lockheed's 'Skunk Works'[0] program. Pure R&D and risky too, because you don't know if it will work. F7ck around and find out is my mantra.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works

[adave]

I mean ADHD is a challenge in of itself, why not push back on the promo or go on a trial phase to figure out how stressful it is. I don't understand the need for people to keep pushing and advancing beyond their means.(goes beyond streching)

Is there a reason you put so much stress and was it all worth it? Are you doing it for money, prestige or a combination of both?

Most of the times its always better to slow down and not fight with your condition just to perform your regular duties. Taking medication and optimizing all for doing your job seems like a waste and something that will have its consequences in the long run.

[dekhn]

I struggled with all of this and decided instead of pull back on responsibility because it was making me extremely unhappy trying to constantly equal my similarly levelled colleagues.

[toivo]

As a programmer I've approached these problems with programming productivity software for myself. 1) A hierarchical task list that has unlimited depth for tasks and undo history. I write every little task down and their subtask and their subtask... This way when I do get distracted (and I do a lot), one look at it and I know snap back to the context I was in. 2) Micro day/routine planner that schedules my day and reminds me to do things with text to speak while I work

[softcactus]

I don't have anything to contribute, but the fact that you are in a senior position of an important project is good news to hear. I have been anxious for some time that my horrible working memory and executive function are going to stunt my career growth unless I start snorting lines of adderall, which I don't want to do.

[maxpowersage]

Read my reply. You _can_ do it. It will be hard, especially with the politics and missed social cues, but it can be done. Talk to your doctor about Concerta which is abuse proofed if you are worried about that aspect. I have tried both ways and you simply need the extra dopamine from your medial forebrain bundle to your prefrontal cortex to maintain task salience. You will need to externalize executive function using your cellphone+smart watch and tracking tools. It is our wheelchair/crutch.

[rootsudo]

Kanban + Medication, by kanban, physical or a laptop or huge screen showing everything that needs to be done. It has to be standalone. I find that works great.

I prefer trello but it is fantastic to idealize what I need to do and sort priority and what to do down the road.

[partido3619463]

Collaborate with other people and draft off of their organizational skills. Pairing can make you way more productive + it’s a good way to get to better ideas.

[sibeliuss]

I don't mean to dismiss your ADHD (and I'm not), but all of the items you listed impact just about everyone and pretty much in the same way. It's the difference between greenfield and something someone else wrote. Keeping track of all of the details in a large system is hard, and most of it is boring. And just about anyone who has a real interest in the field would like to work on something interesting; when the interest isn't there, or the role doesn't align, it's easy to get distracted. And then one has to work twice as hard to keep up. Its basic human nature.

[eyelidlessness]

> and pretty much in the same way

This is the dismissive part. It doesn’t even affect those of us with ADHD the same way, or even affect us each individually the same way every day.

At my best, I’ve been pretty consistently praised for being good at keeping track of how everything fits together and all of the details that should be considered for a given effort. At my worst, I know there’s a short list of things which will pass as functioning if I can bring myself to follow through with it.

Neither of those extremes are normal everyday experiences for most people. And that’s good, and it’s understandable you recognize the wide gamut in between.

I don’t want to dismiss your much broader more general experience either. I just want to push back on the thing that feels invisible for those of us who aren’t actually experiencing that broader more general thing.

[neo_optimus]

I intentionally framed the problems I'm tackling in a way that resonates with a wide spectrum of people, so that I can get a variety of answers and work with anything that resonates well with me. In this process, I guess I didn't press hard on how debilitating executive dysfunction has been for my work (and life in general - story for another time) and I apologize for my assumption but I guess since you're neurotypical there's no way I can actually make you really understand the difference between the amount of energy and willpower required to execute on these tasks/planning/etc. I am formally diagnosed and have been on medicines in the past and the productivity difference and confidence in my abilities with and without medicines is day and night.

To provide a similar real world analogy that has potential to resonate with you: on medicines that work well with me, my core thoughts works as if a car is being driven on a freeway with properly defined rules and regulations, along with lots of other cars following the same rules. Without those medications, it's basically free for all, where there are absolutely no rules and regulations and anyone can drive anyway on that freeway. Sure, there's still a chance that every car reaches its destination safe and sound, but the amount of mental gymnastics needed at every point of time without those inbuilt rules in place is staggeringly exhausting.

This has been my life at work every day, because I have consciously kept myself away from medication for a variety of reasons. This post is an attempt to learn more of these structures and hopefully with enough practice, I'll become efficient in utilizing these structures so much so that it requires less effort and latency to maintain and execute them on a daily basis.

[maxpowersage]

This is a real physiological disorder with a genetic basis. You are dismissing it. You are not helping. People with CP can still walk but look at Walter Whites son to see how much it impacts his life. Adhd is like that but with your prefrontal cortex instead. Barkley is the guy to refer to for actual research.

[hownow]

Who cares? You're working for a CTO with a multimillion dollar exit strategy. Parlay this "title" into more money and get out asap

[stuntkite]

Medication, exercise, and building out a list making / journaling process that works for you.