[alaithea]

I feel this. It's so very hard to manage one's medicated-ADHD productivity in a way that feels useful but doesn't burn like a white-hot flame.

My boss has been supportive and really helped me see the ways in which I was causing myself burnout, encouraging me (as a senior tech IC) to write things down, do more knowledge and skill transfer, and delegate more. That helped me a lot.

What I used to think of as "autonomy," which I valued so highly, following the shiny problems that made my brain happy, was more lone wolf behavior than I like to admit, and not serving me very well career-wise, as it was hard to document or sell what I was doing.

I also had to privately learn how to pace myself, setting realistic, appropriate and prioritized daily goals (nevermind the arm's-long TODO list). Checking myself against those, aiming for better goal-setting each day. Being able to close the laptop when it's done. I never really had a sense of "done" before, I had a lifetime of feeling always-behind. There's this peace, though, that comes with realizing that you _can_ prioritize effectively, do the things, then rest. That peace can become its own reward, which is bananas to me, because my unmedicated brain would never have felt that.

Speaking of which, I might never have had the head-space to work on things like this if I hadn't gotten medicated five years ago. My career has improved and stabilized. For the first time in my life I've stayed at a job for more than three years. Been promoted. Been able to see a future that doesn't just involve running from a job when things get too hard and starting again.

The side effects can be a beast, though. I wonder to myself how many more years I'll be able to manage them.

I wish you the best in finding your way back to a place that works for you.

[bluefirebrand]

> For the first time in my life I've stayed at a job for more than three years.

This is exactly my experience... I'm on leave now and it's just barely past my 3 year mark at this job. And the last time I burned out this hard was also the last time I passed 3 years at a job

I feel very defective at times, for being unable to stay at a job longer than this without burning out

[intended]

> I also had to privately learn how to pace myself, setting realistic, appropriate and prioritized daily goals (nevermind the arm's-long TODO list). Checking myself against those, aiming for better goal-setting each day. Being able to close the laptop when it's done. I never really had a sense of "done" before, I had a lifetime of feeling always-behind. There's this peace, though, that comes with realizing that you _can_ prioritize effectively, do the things, then rest. That peace can become its own reward, which is bananas to me, because my unmedicated brain would never have felt that.

This is pretty much what I am working on, and I too have had followed the “burn out after getting diagnosed and medicated” arc.

Being able to set realistic, appropriate, and prioritized daily goals, and aiming for better goal-setting each day. Sounds like a good thing to aim for.,

I still don’t have a sense of “done”, and struggle to achieve that, even though I know I managed to move the needle a bit.

How long did it take you to get to this point? And how do you deal/ identify/ know you are “done”?

[alaithea]

> How long did it take you to get to this point? And how do you deal/ identify/ know you are “done”?

It took me around three to four years after starting medication to get to this point.

The "done" part comes out of setting and meeting realistic and prioritized goals. If I've done that part right, then I can feel OK about stepping away. How to set those goals is the harder part.

Tasks with time-constraints have to be identified and dealt with, such as "prep for meeting with product team." Identifying them means looking ahead on the calendar (not always easy for ADHD'ers!), and getting out of ADHD magical thinking about "just needing a few minutes before" to prep sufficiently. That might mean scheduling a half hour block for prep on the calendar. As a bonus, being aware of what's coming up next is always a good thing.

Open-ended tasks and independent work are harder to clarify and prioritize, but I got the greatest reward when I started attempting to describe what I was doing at my team's daily standup meetings. I might be spending weeks on writing some document, which can feel endlessly the same, but I force myself to not have the update everyday be "worked on the document," but rather:

> I researched topic X and spoke to people A, B and C to try and answer this question I had, and learned this thing

or

> finished drafting section X, editing section Y and started on section Z

Then it becomes much easier to keep track of the longer journey through writing that document. In addition, writing the description for other people helps make that easier.

Breaking the description down also helps you notice when you're stuck, because your daily descriptions start to sound the same. If you notice that sameness, but then ask yourself "if I say _____ today, what will I be able to say that's different tomorrow" then automatically you'll start to get more specific, have better updates, pace yourself better, and as a bonus you have an idea of what you'll do the next day.

Using the above tactics, I started to use standups to pace myself and feel better about my work (more "done"), whereas I used to become full of anxiety and guilt for not feeling like I could report "progress" day over day. It was all a mindset shift.