 the upside of having ADHD is that I can complete a month's worth of work for a whole team in the space of a weekend and a couple of evenings. the downside of having ADHD is that I keep putting myself in situations where I need to complete a month's worth of work for a whole team in the space of a weekend and a couple of evenings. 48 comments
@Foritus it's ADHD if you also have no perception of time, frequently realise you've been doing something for 9 hours straight without drinking or eating or going to the toilet, find yourself staring at a wall for hours instead of doing a trivial task that would take two minutes, often forget objects exist when they're out of sight, put literally everything off to the last second, pick up endless projects and never finish them, find it impossible to shut your brain off, and are chronically late @Foritus (and, critically, most of these things to a degree where it constantly impacts your life)  @gsuberland @Foritus And with some, the brain shuts up only when thoroughly exhausted, leading to irregular sleeping patterns.  @gsuberland @Foritus 1. Have a task to do  @ryanc I'm so frickin' tired lol been flat out working on EMF stuff (so far 5 PCBs designed from the ground up) and I've gotta do full mechanical and electronic design of a lighting installation in the next two days so I can get the PCBs out to fab in time. @gsuberland yeah, ADHD is pretty much doing a month worth of work in a weekend, and conversely also doing a minute worth of work in a month. When it works, it's feels nice, though I'm not really stoked about the susceptibility to burnout, or the tendency towards hyperfocus induced starvation.  @lunarood @gsuberland And it was really hard for me to learn that a) just because I could do a week’s worth of work in 4 hours does not mean I could do 8 weeks worth of work every week, and b) this was not because I was lazy or poorly organized.  @gsuberland @c0debabe There is also the popular you can do the work of a small team consistently and you know how to exploit the deadline panic so your boss keeps floating that we need another team member at my level because it would be a slog to get the headcount right now.  @gsuberland Worse than all of this, which is already a nightmare, is the clinical inability to properly regulate your emotions and/or prioritize which ones to react to. No one ever talks about the really painful parts of ADHD, because no one sees it externally. @gsuberland I've learned about why I feel the things I feel, and why that's not normal and it has helped me.  @gsuberland oof yeah if that doesn't describe my relationship to work idk what does  @gsuberland I have made a good part of my career performing "impossibility remediation" and really enjoy that. It's the projects that are achievable that I typically screw up on. There's no sense of achievement quite like saving a multi-million dollar project with hours to spare. @mike @gsuberland I got called back to a former workplace to do a "weekend save" of a $10M project. Many of the team who I led were called in too. CEO who I had never worked with comes in all panicky trying to come up with a plan and I'm "A & B you tackle component X; C & D you're on Y; E you take Z; I'll take U and work with E on V when that's done. Let's get to work!" and the CEO is still sitting there trying to figure out why the meeting is over. Sorry bro, we don't have time to panic. @alan @mike @gsuberland But this comes with a really bad downside. People start seeing management potential in you and think it's a good idea giving you projects. And then they expect that you constantly update project plans, document stuff keep track of other peoples task. And you are sitting in front of that stupid project plan and don't update the few words till it's time to go home. @Dr_Obvious @mike @gsuberland Nope. When that happens I just quit. Spent a year as VP Engineering with a staff of 30. Fixed all sorts of problems, made a bunch of unsatisfied customers happy, put in systems to keep things running, got bored, quit before I started to mess up. And there is the downside for me: the lean periods between heroic saves. Gig work before it was called gig work. @alan @mike @gsuberland I am currently working in a 24/7 high tech production environment. That often leads to panic fire fighter mode reactions where I can shine. That compensates a lot of boring tasks. @williampietri @Dr_Obvious @mike @gsuberland Yeah unrealistic launch dates aren't fun, but if they reached out to me at least there was funding. The ones that I liked the most were "national ad campaign launches in a week and we just discovered one of our vendors lied and is nowhere near ready." Okay, pay my retainer and agree to my rate and let's go!  @alan @Dr_Obvious For sure! If they're paying emergency rates, that makes it easier. And if people still enjoy the rush, more power to them. But I think I burned out on that. https://youtu.be/aKV7v2Oh71U  @lightninhopkins sorta? apart from the hunger and dehydration and aches @gsuberland I always have a glass of water. Kind of obsessive about it. Hah! Yeah, it's a pita, the best I have found is to try and make it work for me.   Hey it's like my grampa always said, – if you wait till the last minute - it only takes a minute!  @gsuberland oh this is almost a bit too relatable (i am doing exactly that at the moment)  Yes - but can you control this superpower? I do this - but getting into the hyperfocus trance is pretty iffy, and I'm easily knocked out by real-world interruptions - like my wife coming out and saying "it's 9pm, are you still working?" I actually have a "stop working" alarm. @tbortels @gsuberland I think of it as weighing probabilities, setting myself up for getting into the flow state (hyperfocus). I can weigh the dice towards flow by prepping the "do three things" priority list in advance of starting so I can 'hit the ground running', putting on focus music, having snacks and water nearby, etc. But this doesn't mean I'll succeed most days because, well, definition of ADHD.  @gsuberland the gripping side of ADHD is thinking you (I) just did a months worth of work and only later realizing how many TODOs you left unDONE. @gsuberland hard same. I define quarterly goals, spend 2.5 months doing other work that I'm more interested in, then spend two weeks doing the whole quarter's goals. Much to my manager's dismay 😂 he asked if I could do the two weeks of quarterly goals at the beginning instead and then just have the rest of the quarter for whatever I'm interested in, but that ain't how my brain works. @gsuberland I really appreciate the great conversation you kicked off here. So many good replies!  @gsuberland@chaos.social the problem is when you burn yourself from that so hard that your average 2 hours work finishes being 10 hours work and there are days you cannot function x3  @gsuberland sounds quite similar to one of my former colleagues with narcolepsia. She'd go on a 40 hour+ coding bender sometimes, then collapse and you wouldn't see her for a week. |
Gregory's Server
@gsuberland Wait is that ADHD? I thought I was just good at my job and could fuck about the rest of the month... 😅