Most responses here are about systems and tools — which help, but they're compensations working around the issue rather than at it.
The underlying problem is network regulation in the brain. Your Default Mode Network (the self-referential mind-wandering system) is supposed to quiet down when you engage in tasks. In ADHD, that toggle is unreliable — the DMN keeps intruding, which is why you get that "barrage of micro ideas" breaking through during focus.
A few things that work at the root:
Meditation — not as a relaxation tool, but as direct neuroplasticity training. Focused attention practice (noticing when your mind wandered, returning to object) is literally thousands of reps training that DMN/task-positive toggle. Long-term meditators show measurably better DMN suppression during tasks.
Sleep — DMN regulation degrades hard with poor sleep. Non-negotiable foundation.
The deeper move is changing your relationship to the thoughts themselves. The DMN will always generate ideas. The shift is recognizing them as arisings rather than commands. They still come — they just lose their grip.
Ignore the advice of anyone who doesn't have ADHD, or a medical degree with a speciality in ADHD treatment. Anyone that tells you that you just need to try one "trick", a planner, a mindset change, default mode networks, "try sleeping more", whatever, can either never understand what it's like or is trying to sell you something. Or both. If someone neurotypical gives you advice, just smile and nod, and ignore it. If someone tells you ADHD is a "superpower" promptly ignore them. Unfortunately, this often applies to generalist doctors who don't specialise in ADHD.
The reality is that there is no single thing that will help. You'll have to try shit and see what works for you. What one person swears "fixed" them might do nothing for you.
That said, the one thing that is the most likely to work out is medication. Get yourself a diagnosis, try the meds, see if it helps. Caffeine is fine, but it's no substitute for the real stuff.
Well, if you didn't, you SHOULD try sleeping more. Like, do try to sleep for a whole day. No TV, no music, no mobile phone. Only go to bathroom and eat some quick to make meals, schedule away ALL chores. Everyone I know told me I should walk out more, be more active, but what REALLY helped me regain mental health when I had mental breakdown was a full day of sleeping.
Of course it won't help you just by itself, it's not the only trick you need, but please do try it.
> If someone neurotypical gives you advice, just smile and nod, and ignore it.
Neurotypicals gave me "do not sleep so much, go out in nature or do something". This advice is good for depression, not for ADHD.
> The reality is that there is no single thing that will help. You'll have to try shit and see what works for you. What one person swears "fixed" them might do nothing for you.
Yes, but you have to try different approaches. If you don't try all of them (including sleeping for a day) you won't know.
I did it only once, but it helped me a lot. Otherwise, there is too much to do. Doctor declared that I'm overworked several years ago, before I built a house and got a second job. YMMV.
And as great as it is, even the "real stuff" isn't a silver bullet. In my experience stimulants remove like 25-50% of the difficulty over the long term, depending on the day, which is extremely valuable but it's far from a cure.
Sorry, but this sounds straight up like “lock yourself up in echo chamber”. I don’t completely disagree that many things just don’t work, especially planners. Meds are just too easy to use, you basically buy yourself a “walking stick” and do nothing to learn walking by yourself. This is something a lazy/ADHD person would do, not a one willing to strengthen their mind.
At some point you become exhausted of self-managing in an environment that is not suited to how your mind works.
IME with the meds, the biggest benefit is not focus during its effective period, but the fact that I can still live my life properly afterwards. As in, I haven't had to spend all my day's willpower to stay on task with work, so I have more mental energy for the rest of my life.
It's always nice to have the professional opinion of a psychiatrist over here. It's the first time I hear that "meds being too easy to use" is a drawback, coming from a professional, guess I've come addicted to my psychiatric ailments solely due to how easy the medication is to take, I mean, just a pop and a gulp and I'm the happiest person in the world, so much so that I stop trying completely to better myself!
Oh, how little I am learning to walk by myself. I would be running by now if I was unmedicated and about, the problem is that my mind is weak and I'm lazy. If only I had traded these woke mind virus pills for a stoicism book, or lifting metal, or 'detoxed', what a silly human I am. But I guess the weak and mentally strong, unlike yourself, can't do much about it but keep taking all this poison and remaining sheep. Please keep enlightening us with your knowledge and superiority.
They are an ADHD person. I don’t think we’re at the point in history any more where we leave people to deal with it alone - as with other chronic conditions like depression, sleep apnea, anxiety, obesity, and heart disease, where there are a wide variety of techniques, but with them alone you’ll still be left with a significantly impacted and less fulfilling life.
Don't bother. They know what's up, every ailment can be overpowered and "cured" with willpower. This person is clearly on another plane of "enlightenment", so to say.
> 3) Accept that it's hard to focus on stuff that doesn't interest me, and plan accordingly.
A former boss noticed this about me, years before I knew I had ADHD. It was pretty great. I tended to turn things around extremely quickly when I found them interesting. If he saw something was taking me a while or I wasn’t making progress after a couple days, he’d just give it to someone else. The net result was I got to pick my own projects, found the job much more interesting, and was significantly more productive. On the flip side of this, there were projects other people would struggle with for weeks that he’d give to me and I’d turn it around in a few hours.
These days I don’t find anything interesting and I’ve been trying to will myself to work on the same thing for 2 months (and another for 6+ months) and I can’t seem to do it. I really want to get past these things to find something new to do, but it’s been hard. The one project is massive as well. It had me looking at new career options yesterday.
Caffine is quite interesting because I often got even more tired after 30 minutes drinking some coffee.
The first 30 minutes indeed got me very excited, but then I will fall asleep soon after.
The same thing happened to me right now with energy drink such as Redbull or Monster. Therefore I mostly drink them for some competitive activities that only last short hours
I'm the same with coffee as caffeine, but I can drink a sugar free energy drink (Moister Ultra) and the caffeine in that does the job without any of the sleepiness sideffects.
I have no idea if this will be useful to you, because it's so contingent on my caffeine sensitivity, my sleep, whether or not I've taken Vyvanse, what time of day it is, and what mental tasks I need to perform.
But to give a real answer:
On workdays I have about 20-40 fl oz of coffee during the morning. I stop all stimulants at noon so I can sleep.
On non-workdays I have 1-3 normal sized mugs of coffee in the morning, just because I like it.
Up to a litre of coffee in one morning is crazy from my point of view, but I guess it also depends on the way you prefer your bean drug: you're not drinking thirty shots of espresso, I hope?
ADHD people drink coffee as a form of self medication. Caffeine is an absolutely terrible and barely working stimulant for that purpose, so we end up drinking a lot to get some effect, or at least trick ourselves.
A cup of coffee is 6oz. I drink like 6-8 a day. I do however stick to average roasts, rather than robustas or light "breakfast" roasts.
My brother has that brain worm (that I used to have) where using a medication is "bad" so instead he drinks like 5 giant energy drinks a day.
My father drinks a similar amount of coffee as I do per day, and often drinks coffee as a late night relaxation aide. Stimulants can be "calming" to some people who have a certain genetic mutation and often have ADHD
The first dose of Ritalin I took, I immediately fell asleep and took a 2 hour nap.
It's always extremely weird to me when people have to make this distinction because I was under the impression that ALL Adderall prescriptions are for the XR extended release which comes in capsules full of small beads of medication. No one should be taking Adderall IR instant release tablets. Those things have almost no reason to exist. I really don't understand who is taking those things and where people are getting the impression that IR tablets are a normal Adderall formulation. "Long acting" Adderall has been the norm for decades now and I haven't even seen or heard of anyone taking IR tablets since like the early 2000's
I was given a prescription for XR. It took me a month or more to even try it, because I’d sleep in, then it would take me a while to get moving, and by that time I was worried it would still be active with the idealist it me would think I should go to bed. Something that didn’t last as long would give me much more control.
Because there is ritalin and concerta, I think it's just easier to understand and explain. Im less familiar with adderall but by searching a few times IR XR and Vyvanse are still prescribed? and adderall ir is also approved for narcolepsy at least.
If I take the lowest dose concerta I will not sleep that night no matter how early i take it. This was pretty devestating when I was younger and not mature enough to realize what was going on. Parents were obsessed with ADD medication at the time. I think vyvanse or xr adderall would be a similar nightmare for me.
Lisdexamfetamine, it’s very similar to Adderall but more expensive as it comes in capsules instead of tablets, but the upside is it lasts all day instead of a few hours. It recently became generic in the US, but is still around $60-120 a month’s supply (at least at my dosage), vs $25 or so for a month of Adderall.
Notes on Managing ADHD offers clear perspective and practical advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45083134 The author frames strategy v/s tactics well, something seldom done [0].
Dr. Russell Barkley's youtube videos and book and the How To ADHD youtube channel are other resource I like and refer to, because they've surfaced useful information and perspective to me. How To ADHD is especially nice to share with friends / family / dear ones who happen to be in one's (erratic, surprising, incredibly fun, incredibly annoying, seemingly lawless) orbit.
[0] It irks me how many people say "strategies for ... xyz" when they're talking about procedures, or tactics, or personal hacks.
It's hard. I take concerta and have been laid off or fired more times than most people I know in long-term employment have had jobs. I take Concerta and drink Coffee, but I mostly just enjoy the coffee. It's really hard to stay on track sometimes, it's really hard to go too long without working on something inherently interesting to me. I'm constantly late and prefer late nights, I tend to always have a bad sleep cycle.
Really basic things that other people seem good at, I struggle. Taxes, finances, anything that requires ambient awareness of systems that have no clear feedback loops. Sometimes penalties for trivial things accumulate and it costs a lot of money. Goals, unless they're something like literally climbing a mountain, don't really motivate me. I don't have any financial or life goals at all, they seem artificial and silly.
Without stimulants, and a thankfully somewhat lenient company/client atm, I'd be screwed.
The positive is that I seem to be much better at making friends than most other people I know, and enjoy a variety of interesting hobbies. I'm also not that fearful or anxious about trying new things.
In terms of who I listen to about the topic, it's certainly not any entrepreneur types, it's mostly friends. Though Trevor Noah has a great podcast on the topic last April
Additionally, I cope by exclusion. I don't obligate myself to many things or events, and refuse to participate in group chats. I keep almost no notifications on, and people know that if they need my attention, they can just call me, otherwise I won't respond until I get around to it. I only buy gifts when I find inspiration to, and try not to spread myself too thin.
I also try to avoid easy things as much as possible. I failed at easy assignments, easy exams in school, why bother going through the rote motions for no other purpose than to be measured on my performance in doing them?
Especially the "easy things" bit. What an absolute waste of my time and focus to waste on trivial things that will just be measured against some standard, stale rubric.
Busy work for myself and the person receiving it.
But then, I tend to blow the scope of things I have to do in order to make it seem more important. And that means I extend "deadlines" or take longer to complete things. Oh well.
Part of accepting my ADHD is accepting that there is some truth to the feelings, that is, the notion of deadlines and urgency is usually so phony and unnecessary. My brain, my soul knows that something due at 5pm can absolutely be turned in the next day at 8am and nothing in the world will change.
> But then, I tend to blow the scope of things I have to do in order to make it seem more important. And that means I extend "deadlines" or take longer to complete things. Oh well.
Yep I do this too, in ways that would be absolutely comical to a normal person.
> Part of accepting my ADHD is accepting that there is some truth to the feelings, that is, the notion of deadlines and urgency is usually so phony and unnecessary. My brain, my soul knows that something due at 5pm can absolutely be turned in the next day at 8am and nothing in the world will change.
Yes, although it's helpful in some situations, most modern everyday systems have no intrinsically urgent or important timelines or consequences. The effect is hard to relate to anyone who panics for exams. There's been moments where my brain just knows the test I'm taking has no bearing on my future, and I'll just space out because it provokes no useful stress response.
People don't appreciate how much of their ability to be successful at work comes down to innate anxiety about what usually amounts to bullshit.
Instead of having a million different tabs open, use a tab session manager, save the stuff you want to read later, and keep open only stuff pertinent to things you are working on.
Prioritize your projects to have actionable goals.
When you procrastinate, try to do so by being productive on smaller projects.
Be aware of your own nature, and try to exert control over it. Recognize that not every idea or desire is useful, and learn to discard the ones that are not and investigate or give more attention to the ones that are.
Organization, take notes and organize them. I often have a scratchpad textfile open, that I then organize into sections (e.g. app ideas, ideas for specific code projects, movie ideas, whatever), break these up further into project or topic files. The ones that grow and get fleshed out are the ones worth pursuing.
Have a healthy sleep and recreation routine to not get burned out.
Leaning a little into the the distractions, and building processes to quickly search and hop between things had made it better for me.
At the very least opening tabs with Ctrl+T, tab search with Ctrl+Shift+A, quickly closing them with Ctrl+W is my main workflow in Chrome-based browsers.
Once I get my speed up, I find distractions don't occur as often.
Emacs, org-mode, magit, and AI, combined with good sleep, weight lifting, stimulants, have almost completey nullified my ADHD problems.
I have a few text files open at any one time. One is for a diary I keep, which changes for each month, so for example at the moment I have '2026 01.txt' open. I have a general to-do file and a tech todo file, and then notes.txt. When my notex.txt grows too long, which I define as having to scroll at all, I start to break it up.
When I break it up, I personally use latex files. I know everyone loves markdown, but I'm not a fan of Obsidian (closed source and electron, ugh), so I fell in love with TexStudio.
I have keybindings for simple macros to insert sections and subsections that I can quickly name, and these display in the navigation tree very well. TexStudio also allows multiple tex files open at once with a tabbedinterface, and allows saving sessions, so I can open one file to open all my, say, 'ai app ideas' notes. I've found this to work better for myself than any other available app or solution.
Eventually, I'd like to release a fork which would mainly be trimming stuff out rather than really adding anything in, but it's far from a priority for me at the moment.
I have so many text files (technically wikis and GDocs text docs, but I'm not doing more than lines of text). I was talking to a coworker today about our graveyard of pen and paper notebooks, todo apps, reminder thingies, post-its..
I need two things: ubiquity, so that I can add ideas, todos, etc. wherever I am; and exaggerated simplicity so that I don't end up turning the note solution into its own project that's abandoned or exchanged in a year.
Force yourself to use the same paper journal you carry around. Keep writing whatever comes in your mind, literally everything. Re-read the last day at day's end. Mitigation tecnique to empty your brain, leaving trails.
I have adhd, I write them down. Some of them are great ideas, some are shit.
I got diagnosed at 29. Up until then I was very entrepreneurial and ambitious, constantly working on business ideas. Hell I taught myself software engineering because I had a single idea I hyper focused on lol.
The way I see it, lean into it. ADHD is a double edged sword - you get intrusive thoughts, some of them are bad, but some of them are ideas.
You can’t really change your brain, you can take medication and it might help you focus a bit more.
But I say lean into it. I’ve had several successful ventures from pure ADHD fuelled idea binges.
I don’t really switch off, but I make sure I work in the office every day because being around people helps.
But when I’m alone it’s a barrage of thoughts, some days more intense than others.
I've taken it a step further and just operate on the notion that we weren't really meant to be "office drones". This lifestyle is new for humans.
We used to need people that were aware of their surroundings and able to create novel solutions to environmental challenges.
I leverage that as much as I can. Sometimes that means my "breaks" are actually rollerblading in the park while listening to music and weaving (very politely) between people.
Sometimes that means I workout and pretend I'm hunting or traversing some sort of chasm/river/etc.
It helps reduce the "death stench" that routine, monotonous work seems to give off.
First of all if you have the money get an official diagnosis. While self diagnosis is often right, ADHD symptoms can have overlap with many other things so it is better to be sure.
Now want a quick fix? If you can, get medication. It doesn't work for all people with ADHD but for those that it does it will give you the most bang for the buck.
Now there is coping strategies. Therapists can help a lot. There is also people offering ADHD coaching. This is great because the coaches tend to have ADHD themselves and understand you. It helped me personally a lot but be warned that everyone can offer coaching so quality may wary.
Last part is lifestyle. Sport. It is not optional. Running is amazing and will help you a lot but if you are not fit enough yet, walk. Walk every day for at least 30min. You need to. Also personally for me reading a physical book for at least 30min a day makes a huge, huge difference. Diet is important but what works varies from ADHD person to person. For me cutting out processed sugar was a good step.
Also no caffeine. This may also vary but completely cutting it helped me personally a lot. Yes, it helps somewhat with executive function but only in the short term and does more harm than good in the long term. Generally any form form of self medication be it alcohol, weed and so on, cut it out. Again get proper medication if you can.
Honestly accepting that you have ADHD or well at least some form of neurodivergency is already the biggest step. It gets so much easier once you learn how to properly manage it.
Came across this a few months ago on HN here and there’s a fair bit of exposition on things you’ve mentioned. My personal takeaway from it was to try Todoist, which has been a complete game changer in my life. I’ve used other systems before but something about Todoist worked better for my brain (plus the mobile integration is awesome… my second best over the years was org-mode but the mobile story is way too clunky)
+1, Todoist has changed things for me drastically.
I was diagnosed with ADHD a year and a half ago in my ~mid 30s. The meds (Vyvanse) help somewhat, but the real key to improvement for me has been using Todoist.
IME the real trick is using it consistently, and for everything. My routines (e.g. morning routine: meds, eat, coffee, brush teeth, brush the dog's teeth, etc etc) are all in Todoist, not because I struggle to focus on getting that stuff done in the morning (well, sometimes, perhaps) but because starting the day with do-easy-thing, mark-it-done, repeat, sets up the rest of the day to be run by Todoist instead of the bit of my brain that goes "I know we should be getting ready to leave but WHAT IF YOU WROTE AN APP TO DO THIS COOL THING, JUST QUICKLY TRY THAT NOW, YOU CAN LEAVE AFTER".
I had a similar experience with org-mode too. It was great at work where I'm at my desk all day, and made a huge difference, but not having a good mobile experience makes it impractical for day-to-day home use.
That was 100% the key for me too: put absolutely everything into it that I can’t address immediately, both work and life.
I did use org-mode like that too (all of life into it, not just work) when I was working from home but both capture and viewing when away from the laptop just had too much friction.
I found several Dr. Ned Hallowell's books helpful, see https://drhallowell.com/read/books-by-ned/ in particular "Delivered from Distraction" and "Answers to Distraction."
I don't take stimulants beyond caffeine, I meditate most days at least once a day, which I find helpful, as well as not stay up too late. I keep a pad of paper by my bed to capture ideas. Working to music seems to help.
If you get a lot of ideas, you should reconcile yourself to only acting on a small fraction of them and worry less about all of the possibilities.
I try to take care to keep the commitments that I make, writing them down and tracking them. And here it is important to keep a close track.
I may be less impaired than you are, although many people have noticed I seem to get a lot of ideas. I collaborated with a partner on a book once, and at one point, about halfway through, he was frustrated with me and said, "You are a geyser of ideas. We don't need more ideas, we need to complete what we set out to do."
The "capture everything immediately" approach never worked for me. I'd end up with thousands of notes I never looked at again.
What helped was accepting that most ideas aren't actually that good - they just feel urgent in the moment. Now I use a deliberate friction test: if I still remember the idea after an hour without writing it down, maybe it's worth capturing. The truly important stuff has a way of recurring.
For the stuff that IS worth keeping, voice memos work better than typing for me. Lower friction means I actually do it, and listening back forces me to process rather than just hoard.
I learned of a name to how I have been at 32 years of age, and got formally diagnosed at 39. The trigger was my 6 year old acting like I did when I was 6 and seeing how much of a struggle it is for him and others around him.
Been titrating medication and reworking how I approach my work and personal life the last few months.
The thing about constant stream of ideas, micro ideas, while life pulls in different directions- kids, partner, social life, home needs etc is the struggle I am working on to manage better.
It sounds like we could share notes. Would you be interested to communicate over a private message?
I’m based in the Netherlands.
P.s. I’ve got nothing to sell, influence or creep about. Genuinely someone on the same boat and I thought it would be nice to communicate with someone who can relate.
If you’d prefer - my email is aravindh at fastmail com
It is always a trade off of fighting spam versus actually communicating. Do I want this person to easily write to me without a lot of effort? Or do I pay the cognitive cost for my audience for the slight chance of win against spammers?
I chose to stay simple.
In addition to other great suggestions (a good night's sleep being #1), two things come to mind:
- Write down thoughts that pop-up and seem potentially useful, and then forget about them. It's easier said than done, but you have to balance "this may seem useful later" with "I got better things to do now". For me, knowing I have the idea recorded somewhere puts my mind at ease.
- Feel free to just get rid of accumulated browser tabs, random to-do's or even mental notes. If you always have multiple things open, do a hard reset every now and then. It's difficult to let go at first, but you may realize that if an idea was really worth entertaining, it will come back to you. No great contribution is the result of one single thought, IMO.
Note: I lean closer to scattered attention than AD(H)D, because it doesn't affect my normal functioning. Sure, it gets progressively more annoying when deadlines are looming, but it also provides a great source of creativity.
Read the book ADHD is awesome. I read the audiobook during a recent solo trip to London because my son was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago and I wanted to understand him better and be more patient with him. I think a lot of it he gets from me and I relate to a lot of this stuff where where, all I want to do is work on these crazy ideas all day. I co-founded a non-profit that does electoral reform because I want to optimize everything. I learned Esperanto I type on a dvorak key map etc. everywhere I look all I see is things to be optimized. but I'm able to manage it fairly well to hold down a software engineering job. I think he has not learned that yet so he struggles. but reading this book helped me see him and understand him better instead of just getting frustrated with him.
Music is big for me - there are some good lists on YouTube.
Taking a few steps forward on something help me get over the initial paralysis. Get people to help you need priorities. I constantly check in with bosses to ensure I’m doing the most important thing.
Interesting about sleep, I definitely feel most productive in the morning after a solid night of sleep.
It has its downsides but a constant comment/compliment I get from friends how much I get done with my limited time. I have to always be doing something that consumes my attention or I’ll go nuts. I can’t watch sports for example because all the constant stops and starts make me lose my attention and go somewhere else.
Sleep - up there or higher than meds maybe. Seriously, if you want to throw money at something, do it here.
Meditation - it trains your focus, gotta be the "shamatha" kind, i.e focusing on a single point of your body, say the tip of your nose as you breathe, and upon losing focus and thinking of something else returning to that anchor point.
App blocker - really important. No distractions/limit short form content
Diet - also really important, low carbs, healthy diet. Lots of fiber. Minimize glucose spikes.
Sunlight
Exercise - aids sleep, boosts cognition
I believe these to be the main ones. The thing is that it all loops back to impulsivity (your brain constantly churning ideas and following them), which realistically, in my experience, is mostly affected by meds, sleep, exercise (as you do it), and maybe over the long run, via meditation. I do believe the first two are the basis to everything.
I don't think what I experience is the exact same (maybe a different intensity), so I don't know if this will make sense.
For me caffeine makes it a lot worse, I'm pretty sensitive, on a lot of days I can't even drink a cup of coffee or it'll affect me. I also get a lot worse if I am letting a lot of tasks build up and I bounce around between them.
Ultimately what worked for me was developing the ability to not react to something crossing my mind. Like in your example right when the micro idea would cross my mind after going deep, I'd just let that micro thought have a few seconds to pass through my mind, and not react to it. I wouldn't give into the thought "I need to start doing this micro project!" or have any kind of reaction. Once the immediate reaction passed I would decide whether it's worth changing my focus.
This can also be used in the inverse, if I decide to go deep on something, periodically checking in to see if it's still worth going vs asking for help/input.
It's difficult, but try writing everything down, just to let it out at least.
Don't expect a magic bullet here. At least for me, even though I'm medicated, the constant torrent of ideas, of thoughts, of context switching is exhausting.
I have ADHD, diagnosed in my 40s. 2 sons, a struggling business. Your experience seems familiar, so get diagnosed. If you do have ADHD then I don't think you should expect of yourself to be "fixed" to match the "average" norm. You will still be thinking about random stuff ("be creative"), it just will be a bit less of an issue in doing what is important.
What seems to work for me:
* meds
* writing everything down. This is not ADHD specific advice, I got it from GTD and it decreased anxiety. Just get used to the feeling that you will pull it out when you need it. I keep looking around for better solutions, but I no longer expect to have one that is perfect. Currently peeking back into Obsidian, for how flexible it is, but not abandoning OmniFocus and other tools I use.
* I prioritize regular sleep, but I allow myself digging deep in a subject that interests me from time to time
* physical work is surprisingly relaxing
* AI is becoming very important to me in completing tasks which are complex enough for me to get bored/tired/overwhelmed before reaching the finish line. A micro idea is great if you can tell Claude to implement it and come back to you. Even better when it succeeds :) The shorter time from starting to reward of completing is great for delivering.
* schedule some time for learning new stuff, otherwise you will become tired that it's all work and no fun
* delegate taking into account where you struggle the most. You might feel bad since you are delegating the most difficult work, but it might actually by trivial to people with brains with no such issues.
* not everything needs to be done, prioritize and don't worry about the less important stuff your brain throws at you
* it's more about setting time blocks to focus on something than reaching a specific goal. An hour scheduled in the calendar for support emails, for development, for reading...
* cheer up, we're entering the best period so far for people having ideas and you will have plenty
I'm also curious what others' takes are too. Lately I have found myself completely unable to remember things without writing them down or completely losing focus on a task and instead going off on "side quests." A close friend familiar with ADHD hinted that I probably have "late developing ADHD" and advised that I get evaluated/diagnosed.
The thought of that kind of scares me---I'm in my late 20s and tend to think I have functioned my whole life without needing any kind of coping strategy or technique to keep myself on top of my work, but now I am facing the possibility that I might just have to start doing things differently, and I'm not sure where to start.
Aside from actually getting diagnosed, are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?
> are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?
How do you tend to spend your time?
What percentage of your time is spent on activities that benefit from rapid context-switching and short periods of concentration? (Examples might include watching short-form content, browsing/commenting on online forums, most video games, navigating most cities, and working in certain environments).
How much time do you spend on activities that benefit from the opposite? Sustained concentration and attention with minimal interruptions. (Examples might include watching movies, reading novels, some video games, navigating countryside, and working in certain environments).
Our bodies and minds adapt to the demands we place on them. If you're sedentary all day you'll lose muscle mass, cardio endurance, etc.
Late 20s/early 30s is when I started to notice the costs associated with my lifestyle becoming more apparent. The prophylactic effects of youth start to wear off and you realise that you are what you eat, in a multitude of ways.
There are some really good suggestions in this thread: sleep, exercise, medication. Therapy also helps some.
Externalizing my brain helped massively before I was diagnosed. Pages and pages of notes -- both to write an idea down to move away from it and as a way to make sure I do a task. It's way easier for me to accomplish something if I can obsessively plan it out in advance, and it's way easier to stop rolling an idea around in my head if I jot it down (potentially to be never entertained again.)
It's a later step after diagnosis, but my doctor told me I'd be surprised at how effective medication can be. They were 100% right. It's not a cure all and it's not without potential side effects, but it makes me sad that it took me so long to approach my primary doctor about the issues.
But as a side note, the medical info I've read makes a pretty firm statement that there is no late developing ADHD. One if the diagnostic criteria is that the symptoms occurred during childhood. Coping and your environment may affect the disorder's effect on your life, but it's with you for your life. _However_, adult diagnosis is very real. Your environment changes so much as you age, and it may or may not make ADHD worse. I'd talk to your primary doctor with an open mind, both for what may be going on and for how to deal with it.
Carefully consider your environment. I perform best with very little going on around me. In my physical environment and on my PC. Austere. Minimize things that catch your brain and eye. One or two apps at a time, close everything else. Pick your one more important thing every day and work on that. It needs to be a contract. Usually you have one or two important things to be doing and you can ignore everything else without too much consequence.
To remember things you need an ironclad todo system that lets you very quickly capture anything you need to remember. You need to be able to record, triage, filter, prioritize, and execute on anything you need to remember. If any one of those stages is leaky you won't trust it and it won't last. My entire life is structured around managing it. I have to have very strong discipline. House must be spotless. Desk must be spotless. Try to work in the same place at the same time every day. Environmental and contextual stability is huge. Your brain must associate a particular desk, chair, place with doing the most important things. If you allow yourself to goof off or do other things in that place you are losing the fight.
Working out fixes a lot for me too. I workout or my mood and motivation falls apart. Move or die. Again, consistency is key. Everything I do around environment is to reduce the need to use executive function. It is finite and fickle for people with ADHD. The more you have to think and convince yourself to do things the less likely you are to do them. You need consistent cues. "Sit down here, start timer, means work on main thing and nothing else." If you can have discipline at all of these external things, the work can just happen and there is a kind of freedom in that.
Program outlets. Give yourself set, specific time to explore the sidetracking. Don't tell your brain no. Tell it "later". It helps if you know there is time for the extra thoughts. That there is a relief valve.
Also, drugs. I use prescribed stimulants. There are some unpleasant negative things, but I can function with them and life is better with them. But it isn't some magical cure. You still have to be organized and willing to work on your tasks or you will just be really focused on things you don't really need to be doing.
I could write so much more, but that is some top of mind stuff that I think sits at the top of my hierarchy of being productive. Oh and you may need to have some conversations with future you. How is future you, a week, month, year from now going to feel if you burned a lot of time on side quests?
Write them down somewhere you know you’ll come back to them. This lets your brain let go and stop chewing on them.
Review what you’ve written down fairly frequently (weekly or so). You won’t have enough capacity to act on all or even most of it. Extract the most important items.
Put the rest in a “someday/maybe” list that you review rarely (quarterly or annually) to keep your brain satisfied that they’re not lost permanently. When reviewing this list you can remove anything that no longer interests you.
I think there a lot of good points from others about symptom management, but I think switching off is actually pretty important too. I'm finding that fixing my procrastination and task initiation issues with medication and systems has left me more tired, as I'm doing more.
Everyone is different, but I think for ADHD people we can't be still to recuperate. I'm giving knitting a try, it's a pretty meditative activity, with a low cognitive load. My husband plays video games.
Getting out in nature is good. Walking, biking. I bought a onewheel just for the novelty of floating around the neighborhood.
A strong cardio session in the morning. Be careful with caffeine. Use L-Theanine tactically. Have a very strict schedule with time blocks.
If you have thoughts in your mind you can't put away, write it all down on pen and paper (draw if possible). Take only 5 minutes. Then tell yourself you will come back to it at a better time. Once in a while sort the ideas and schedule when to think about them if they are worth exploring. It's key to order them as it makes you feel in control.
Get tested. Get it treated. It could change your life. No joke. It's not a big deal. I know there's a stigma, but really, it's not a big deal. 15%+ of the population has it. Just go get it checked out. Promise.
Well you don't manage them. If you really find something interesting, you often start writing it down in some work already...for example `cargo new` and then add a bunch of packages, start getting it working on...
That's exactly what I've been having for the last 20 years. If something motivates you, you do it non-stop, until you are bored, switch to the next thing...it happens around 2 to 3 days during the "hype" period, then you suddenly got off to new things.
That's why I have hundreds of POCs and toy projects at hand, but only a few of them materialized.
Get on medicine. It’s the thing that actually changed my life.
That, and learn what adhd actually does, stuff like issues prioritizing tasks, sudden impulsive thoughts, “the adhd wall”, RSD, weak inner voice, etc. It’s much easier to handle if you understand it and can differentiate between something like an impulse and regular thoughts.
I recommend watching videos from Dr Berkeley on YouTube on how to manage adhd. There are lots of tricks like making things physical (time, tasks), or using with external consequences to combat weak inner voice
not Berkeley, its Russell Barkley. He's done a few hundred videos after he retired from the day job, but now he's 72 and really retired, so it's back to Google scholar we go... :-)
Low dose extended release Adderall. I feel completely myself. It helps me make conscious choices about transitions between tasks. I don’t get irritated by interruptions. When I transition, it’s easier to put down what I was doing before and take up the new task.
If you think you have ADHD, try getting evaluated by a clinician. It’s not hard to do. A good clinician can go over the range of behavioral and medication options and assess for comirbidities like autism.
The game changer for me was atomoxetine. Also, getting vitamin deficiencies under control (D/B12).
I often work on several projects at the same time, and that sort of "keeps everything interesting"; I also have some personal projects, that may or may not get attention depending on my enthusiasm. I often take notes on things/thoughts/ideas, but they work mostly as a mnemonic to help me recall details.
You’re not alone a lot of founders and builders experience this ADHD-like pattern: intense curiosity, deep focus, then idea overload. Your brain is optimized for exploration, not maintenance, which is why vision comes easy and follow-through feels hard. What helps is having one place to dump ideas, time-boxing deep work, offloading admin, and keeping tools minimal. Switching off is still tough, but physical activity, hard stop routines, and accepting rest as part of productivity make a real difference.
I have lived my entire life with ADHD: Forget about getting "everything" done, instead periodically reprioritize and keep putting your focus onto these priorities, everything that is actually important enough to get done will and everything else can be done by someone else -- just sit tight. This works for software especially so, just sit and wait for someone more fool hardy with more to lose to do the truly annoying things and then adopt their work if it helps your priorities.
2. If you're diagnosed, start medication and see if it works for you - it's by far the intervention with most evidence behind it for alleviating ADHD symptoms. It's not for everyone but for many of the people it helps starting medication is an absolutely life changing decision in the best possible way.
+1 to this, but not necessarily in response to your question - but so that you can stay on top of all the errands that build up over the course of your life, and that materially benefit you! The sense of security from that has notably improved my work.
I’m diagnosed adhd. If you’re like me, you cannot switch it off. Medication helps a lot with the negative effects, but the stream of ideas is never turned off, it’s just way more manageable, and you feel more in control. That has been a huge improvement to my mental health.
Weed does help sometimes, though I would not say the stream is turned off, but a lot of things go in the background, if that makes sense.
It’s cliche but I would recommend to see a psychiatrist for diagnosis and a therapist
Weed helped me for a moment, but I had to use the right kind. So much of it right now is do high in THC that it made things worse.
It had to be a good mix of THC and CBD and other terpines for the entourage effect.
I realized also that ingesting it as controlled oil drops was best. As I could get the same, consistent level.
For me, it just relaxed me enough that, though the engine was still running , I didn't feel like I HAD to redline it all the time. I could just chill and mellow out. And that it's okay to chill and mellow out sometimes.
I write them down in Obsidian, my calendar, or my reminders app and then revisit it accordingly. If it's something I need to address later, then whatever + Reminders, because I don't want the mental tax of having to remember to do something later.
Flagitate is a real word, by the way, and means to demand things urgently and passionately. I suppose if you were a "flagitating laser beam", you would have a laser-like focus on the things you demand. This is separate from being distracted.
2) Atomoxetine works for me. For managing thoughts, I recommend to just write markdown text every day by create new file every month like "diary.2026.01.md". Then you can track daily tasks and medium/long term goals. I get easily distracted when using TODO apps.
1/ Chose a career as a Data Scientist, which benefits from intense focus.
2/ All the thoughts and tasks that i get in my head, if tasks are small, i try to do some of them immediately. Otherwise, i write it down, and keep a sticky which i close at the end of the day.
3/ Am 40, I have a partner, who has slowly realized that i am different, and since the past few years she coaches me to do tasks i dont like (submit expense reports). I happily give her pocket shopping money in exchange.
4/ I take notes at every meeting, Notion is my tool.
5/ Switching off, what's that? I realize my teams think that i am a maniac, and my wife thinks am too obsessed. I help my team do things, and tell them i can come across as too hot, and they need to let me to know to backoff. I like to watch movies, and do take a break from time to time.
Before I got medicated, DMAE and Gotu-Kola extract (nothing to do with Cola/Caffiene) worked pretty well. Pramiracetam if you spend enough $ and can find it, but it will make you more of a logical robot so your social life and loved ones will suffer -- I used sparingly
I take your hedging to mean you are probably self diagnosing. It's worth talking to a doctor and getting the ball rolling on a formal diagnosis. ADHD is not the only diagnosis with those symptoms. For instance bipolar and autism spectrum disorder. Again, not a doctor, take that with a grain of salt.
There are probably new tactics you can adopt in this thread, and they may help and are worth trying. Advice which is actionable today is valuable. But if this is severe enough to disrupt your life, the best strategy is a combination of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes (eg exercise).
Easier said than done, I know. I have my own issues I'm struggling with and I get it. I'm in the midst of trying that same three pronged approach.
Please also understand that these diagnosis do not all have the same consequences for not treating them. If you don't want to pursue formal diagnosis and treatment, that is your right, but I would urge you to investigate whether or not you are bipolar in any case. If you have your first manic episode, and you don't understand that is what is happening, it could be dangerous. What you're describing sounds more like ADHD to me personally but is not inconsistent with hypomania either. Again, not a doctor, grain of salt.
Note that if you ever want to be a pilot, THINK VERY HARD BEFORE GETTING DIAGNOSED OR MEDICATED. This doesn't apply to most people, but it is the major gotcha on an otherwise straightforward decision.
/r/flying is full of people who wish they didn't have this in their medical record. The FAA is totally backwards about medical stuff and has a very dim view towards ADHD & associated meds.
I'm disappointed to acknowledge you have a point. Shame on the FAA for pushing people into the closet with this.
If one did want to become a pilot, I do think it would be critical to determine whether or not they were prone to manic episodes. That really could be very dangerous to a pilot and their crew, passengers, etc.
Also, from my 15 minutes of preliminary research, I don't think that applies to pilots of ultralights. So if your dream is simply to fly, it's still achievable.
Yes, you are correct. My point is that a lot of people who self diagnose as ADHD have a different disorder that causes executive function issues, and it's important to rule out bipolar because it has very different consequences. I don't care if someone with untreated ADHD or ASD flies a plane, but untreated bipolar disorder could actually be dangerous. (Not a doctor.)
You might be right, but until you get a professional diagnosis you can't really be sure. Hacker-news will disagree but it is impossible to be objective about your own mental health. The good news is that if you do have adult ADHD, it is treatable (much more so than other conditions like depression).
Some people might try to spin it as something cool, but that last "d" stands for disorder. It's a disorder and NOT a "founder thing", regardless of what Paul Graham thinks. ADHD can do enormous damage to your life, relationships, and professional development.
What quietened the “thousands of competing thoughts” that used to go through my brain constantly was an ADHD diagnosis and then medication (methylphenidate / Concerta XL in my case, I tried lisdexamfetamine / Elvanse first but it did nothing for my ADHD symptoms. Everyone responds differently to the various medications, you may have to try several until you find one that works for you).
The diagnosis/medication route isn’t for everyone but, in my case, it is a thousand times better than trying any systems/strategies unmedicated.
Medication alone isn’t a magical cure but it gets me to the point where various systems/strategies do start to work.
Also whilst medicated I don’t get as distracted anywhere near as easily. If I do think of something else I can write it down and go back to what I was working on.
Whilst medicated I don’t try and keep track of 4 different conversations going on around me whilst not giving enough attention to the actual person I’m supposed to be listening to and talking to.
Whilst medicated I don’t just endlessly write, rewrite or reorder TODO lists, I can actually start (and finish!) items on that list. This means I’m not just motivated by stress/deadlines, I can get things done way ahead of the last minute.
An ADHD diagnosis and medication has been utterly transformational in my life.
I tried a whole host of stuff in the years before I finally went for an official diagnosis. In hindsight I wish I’d spoken to my doctor years earlier but, guess what, people with ADHD procrastinate.
Lastly, I now no longer have to expend huge amounts of energy masking my ADHD symptoms. Prior to diagnosis I didn’t realise just how much of a toll this was taking on me and I just attributed it to 25 years of working in the IT industry and possible burnout.
I’m not diagnosed but have a high correlation condition (APD) which explains my inattentive ADHD ways that only my closest people basically knew were there the whole time.
After reading a book about APD, I felt like I was reading reports written about my life. I told my late wife’s best friend and she was like “she knew the whole time, you drove her crazy sometimes”. I was blissfully ignorant.
I drink a lot of coffee as a baseline and have since high school. I’m afraid of stimulant drugs and won’t pursue them.
The one thing that I love that truly changed my life for the better is running. I started at 45 after a series of really awful events. I’ve never felt such a clarity of mind and feeling.
I wish I had known about it in my teens. I went through alot of shitty times without understanding why. Life moved on, but I wasted alot of opportunity and missed some things that I regret a bit.
Run (or bike or whatever gets you) and get to know yourself. Know what you want, and when you embark on a side quest, stop and see if you are going where you want to be.
Two schools of thinking I flip flop between to rationalize however I'm currently behaving:
a.) Ideas not meaningfully capitalized on are no more useful than delusions. Force yourself to focus with tools.
b.) Don't worry about it; you should be able to think and imagine freely in and about the environment the world has presented you with. When you have The One Right Idea™, you'll know, and it'll be like it's putting itself together in front of you. Allow yourself kindness, understanding, and leniency; only then will your output be pure. Or something.
Maybe it's good to have some of both of these. Maybe I should plan for them in advance.
I wouldn’t suggest amphetamines. It’s what some/most doctors prescribe for ADHD, but unlike drugs that are generally ok like caffeine and statins, amphetamines can have long-term negative effects. In-general, avoid controlled substances.
I tried some of the Dr. Amen supplements, but they wired me up too much like I was on amphetimines, so I had to stop.
I just take Ginseng now, and it works well.
Eating carrots, eggs, and spinach are also good. Fasting a little helps me focus. I have an MTHFR mutation, so if I eat things with too much folic acid, I get brain fog; breads, cereals, etc. contain it- anything with enriched flour. I tried 5-methylfolate for a while, but it didn’t help.
Managing ADHD this way for me is a lot safer. When I was taking meds, I was either taking 50% levoamphetamine and was intolerant, always right, over-the-top on top of things (when I was best at chess!) and no one wanted to work with me or was taking (dextro)amphetamine and focused but on the wrong things.
You don’t have to be perfect. If you have ADHD, you have to be ok with that. There is no pill that will make everything right forever. And maybe 20% of people are right there with you.
Still, try your best to not be a burden. Even when you feel like all is lost, and you’re tired of everything, you’ll have more to give, and life is going to throw something at you to prove it. Life may not be reasonable, but so what?
I perform better on days I have walked. I'm walking 10k steps (4km by my Garmin) a day, I want to reach 10km a day. It also helps my anxiety, my therapist says it manages to burn off excess energy and helps regulate my emotions.
I also am one of the few people who can walk and read at the same time, either from an ereader, phone or a book (as long as the size is manageable). I read and comprehend better when I am walking. It's crazy, but I'm a klutz when I'm not reading. When I'm walking I pay far better attention to the road as well.
I write them down. I've been following the GTD system(using org-mode with the excellent org-gtd package). The basic concept is just that you write down things when they pop into your head. Once a day, you go through the list of stuff you wrote down and sort it into categories like "do this asap", "this is a multistep project with these individual steps that I can work on over time", "This is a habitual task that repeats on some interval. "maybe do this some day", or just discard it. I definitely get the flurry of ideas you describe. But not just ideas, mundane shit I gotta do. I'm at the store and a thought will pop into my head like I gotta clean the filter in my washing machine. Or I'm at home coding and I remember I need to buy milk. But when I'm at the store, I don't remember the milk. And when I'm at home, I don't remember the pump filter. So not only do these things not get done, they keep popping up in contexts where I can't do anything about them, and distracting me from what I'm actually trying to do.
GTD helps address that disconnect. The thought pops up, I dump it in the inbox. It is now "dealt with", asynchronously, and the thought can stop bouncing around my head. If it pops up again, I remember that I wrote it down, and let it go. Sometimes I'm not sure, so I just write it down again, no biggie if it gets duplicated.
And it also serves as a filter. So many of my ideas are just silly flights of fancy that, when I'm confronted with them even the next day, I already hate them, and just discard them.
It took me months to get used to it, and get consistent with even remembering to write stuff down. But you get better at it, and eventually you'll have less random thoughts bouncing around your head all the time. It's actually helped me be less stressed and calmed me down a bunch.
It's important to note that the system is ever evolving. It wraps in on itself. As I use the system, ideas and frustrations about the system pops up. I write them down as well, and if actionable, do something about them. So for instance, my list of "asap" tasks was getting cluttered with: groceries I need to buy, various changes to my emacs/wm/OS configuration, things that needed to get done, but were not really urgent, like "clean the shower". Obviously cleaning the shower is a good idea, but it's not like the world will end if I don't do it right this minute. This resulted in me always having more of these single tasks that I could typically finish in a day, which was distracting, because there were all these items on my agenda pulling my mind in different directions. So I herded these things into places where they make more sense. Made a shopping list and a wishlist. The shopping list gets synced to my phone and I have a widget for it via the orgzly app(which I also use as my mobile inbox). These things are not on my agenda, because whenever I'm looking at my agenda I'm not in a position to buy milk. "Config stuff" is now its own list, and I have a weekly habit item where I spend a couple hours on stuff in that list. I don't touch it otherwise and it doesn't clog up my agenda. More tedious, less urgent chores have their own list as well, and I similarly try to spend at least an hour a week on those.
Now, the block of my agenda with these "single tasks" will rarely be more than 5 tasks, most of them taking less than 10 minutes. I can easily clear it almost every day. And if I have a bad day and do nothing, the list is still manageable the next day. And ofc I made a daily habit item to that effect. That contributes to a sense of mastery, and I also get to work on the "fun stuff" without being plagued by guilt about all the other tasks I'm neglecting. Fuck yes.
Now I'm noticing another issue, that I'm getting an increasing list of these multistep projects. And I'm currently working on making a weekly review process where i prioritise projects. Ideally, I want a list of active projects with an explicit goal that I should check off at least one subtask in every active project in a week. And a procedure to manage which projects are active, not active, etc. that way I can keep my agenda free of projects that I've fallen out of love with that just sit in my agenda making me guilty.
Of course, the GTD book goes into all of this in detail. But I don't have the book. I prefer to develop this system myself, incrementally. One major issue I've had in the past with these systems is a sort of "system overwhelm", where the ADHD tendency to take things too far leads me to "commit" to adopting some ambitious, complicated system virtually overnight, and it's good for a couple days. Then I have a bad day, fail to follow it, and the ADHD propensity to see myself as a failure takes over, leading me to discard the system because I think I'm just not capable of following it. No more. Start with something dead simple, that you can do even on your shittiest days. Write some stuff down, go through it the next day. Just do that one thing. If after processing the inbox, all you can manage is to fuck off and play video games all day, fine. It's ok to have bad days. I certainly still have them. But even people with ADHD can develop habits. We're just bad at the initial phase ehere the habit isn't automatic yet. So make it at simole as possible at first, and then build on it slowly over time is my main advice.
>I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure. I have thoughts, ideas, projects, concepts, links, things to read... fired at my brain all day every day. I can go deep on a topic for hours, but then be hit by a barrage of micro ideas. I really struggle to stay on track and focus. Oh and I run a business, manage people, try to make a profit. It's hard. And kids. And life?
This isnt adhd. It's an awful lot like adhd but isnt unique or something that would be a diagnosis.
At most you're diagnosing high curiosity and obviously openness. Just a personality type. Common of people who were exposed to the internet since childhood. You're probably dating yourself as a millennial; late 30s?
>I think there is a founder/ADHD thing. Paul Graham thinks so. Maybe even a tech person angle. What have other people experienced?
On either side of this personality traits. You have the thinkers who make connections and invent new things. So they are great at startups and entrepreneurship. But the moment the business gets beyond this step. They fall away.
The opposite personality is one who doesnt make new connections or invents new things, but knows how to execute and follow through.
Ive seen it happen in tech and politics many times now. It's something Elon musk learnt in university. You have to give up your baby to be raised by someone who can raise it right.
>And how do others cope? I don't really know this world. I do know that my old boss once called me a "flagitating laser beam". I think he meant distracted. I use a bunch of systems to cope. For a long time lists, and then Asana. Asana ruled my life. I just built my own thing to capture tasks, projects, but also knowlegde. Not sure if it will help we will see.
a couple paragraphs on the internet will never get you a diagnosis of adhd... but there are tests online that might guide. I was a huge trello fan until atlassian ruined it. Ive been thinking of coding a trello-like into my home django project.
>- Who else feels this way? - How do you manage? - Oh and how do you switch off? That is hard
Why switch it off? There is training of course; you need to learn when to listen to your guardian angel. mindful meditation will help. Go buy a muse EEG. Do get the sleep one even though its more expensive.
But no 'switch off' it's about keeping it, but being able to tell your brain not now.
What you need is an assistant or partner. Luckily for you, if you cant afford someone, you can use AI.
Most responses here are about systems and tools — which help, but they're compensations working around the issue rather than at it.
The underlying problem is network regulation in the brain. Your Default Mode Network (the self-referential mind-wandering system) is supposed to quiet down when you engage in tasks. In ADHD, that toggle is unreliable — the DMN keeps intruding, which is why you get that "barrage of micro ideas" breaking through during focus.
A few things that work at the root:
Meditation — not as a relaxation tool, but as direct neuroplasticity training. Focused attention practice (noticing when your mind wandered, returning to object) is literally thousands of reps training that DMN/task-positive toggle. Long-term meditators show measurably better DMN suppression during tasks.
Sleep — DMN regulation degrades hard with poor sleep. Non-negotiable foundation.
The deeper move is changing your relationship to the thoughts themselves. The DMN will always generate ideas. The shift is recognizing them as arisings rather than commands. They still come — they just lose their grip.
Sleep comes up so much. Really interesting.
Ignore the advice of anyone who doesn't have ADHD, or a medical degree with a speciality in ADHD treatment. Anyone that tells you that you just need to try one "trick", a planner, a mindset change, default mode networks, "try sleeping more", whatever, can either never understand what it's like or is trying to sell you something. Or both. If someone neurotypical gives you advice, just smile and nod, and ignore it. If someone tells you ADHD is a "superpower" promptly ignore them. Unfortunately, this often applies to generalist doctors who don't specialise in ADHD.
The reality is that there is no single thing that will help. You'll have to try shit and see what works for you. What one person swears "fixed" them might do nothing for you.
That said, the one thing that is the most likely to work out is medication. Get yourself a diagnosis, try the meds, see if it helps. Caffeine is fine, but it's no substitute for the real stuff.
Well, if you didn't, you SHOULD try sleeping more. Like, do try to sleep for a whole day. No TV, no music, no mobile phone. Only go to bathroom and eat some quick to make meals, schedule away ALL chores. Everyone I know told me I should walk out more, be more active, but what REALLY helped me regain mental health when I had mental breakdown was a full day of sleeping.
Of course it won't help you just by itself, it's not the only trick you need, but please do try it.
> If someone neurotypical gives you advice, just smile and nod, and ignore it.
Neurotypicals gave me "do not sleep so much, go out in nature or do something". This advice is good for depression, not for ADHD.
> The reality is that there is no single thing that will help. You'll have to try shit and see what works for you. What one person swears "fixed" them might do nothing for you.
Yes, but you have to try different approaches. If you don't try all of them (including sleeping for a day) you won't know.
How often do you sleep for an entire day?
I did it only once, but it helped me a lot. Otherwise, there is too much to do. Doctor declared that I'm overworked several years ago, before I built a house and got a second job. YMMV.
And as great as it is, even the "real stuff" isn't a silver bullet. In my experience stimulants remove like 25-50% of the difficulty over the long term, depending on the day, which is extremely valuable but it's far from a cure.
Sorry, but this sounds straight up like “lock yourself up in echo chamber”. I don’t completely disagree that many things just don’t work, especially planners. Meds are just too easy to use, you basically buy yourself a “walking stick” and do nothing to learn walking by yourself. This is something a lazy/ADHD person would do, not a one willing to strengthen their mind.
At some point you become exhausted of self-managing in an environment that is not suited to how your mind works.
IME with the meds, the biggest benefit is not focus during its effective period, but the fact that I can still live my life properly afterwards. As in, I haven't had to spend all my day's willpower to stay on task with work, so I have more mental energy for the rest of my life.
You're arguing that meds are a crutch. Crutches are needed if you have a broken leg, or, in this case, a broken neural signalling system.
It's always nice to have the professional opinion of a psychiatrist over here. It's the first time I hear that "meds being too easy to use" is a drawback, coming from a professional, guess I've come addicted to my psychiatric ailments solely due to how easy the medication is to take, I mean, just a pop and a gulp and I'm the happiest person in the world, so much so that I stop trying completely to better myself!
Oh, how little I am learning to walk by myself. I would be running by now if I was unmedicated and about, the problem is that my mind is weak and I'm lazy. If only I had traded these woke mind virus pills for a stoicism book, or lifting metal, or 'detoxed', what a silly human I am. But I guess the weak and mentally strong, unlike yourself, can't do much about it but keep taking all this poison and remaining sheep. Please keep enlightening us with your knowledge and superiority.
They are an ADHD person. I don’t think we’re at the point in history any more where we leave people to deal with it alone - as with other chronic conditions like depression, sleep apnea, anxiety, obesity, and heart disease, where there are a wide variety of techniques, but with them alone you’ll still be left with a significantly impacted and less fulfilling life.
Don't bother. They know what's up, every ailment can be overpowered and "cured" with willpower. This person is clearly on another plane of "enlightenment", so to say.
What's worked for me:
1) Good, regular sleep. ADHD symptoms are way more controllable when I'm well rested.
2) Stimulants: caffeine and Vyvanse. I also had a prescription for Adderall, but it has some nasty side effects for me so I rarely take it.
3) Accept that it's hard to focus on stuff that doesn't interest me, and plan accordingly. (Including career choices.)
4) Work in person, rather than remotely. I'm too tempted to screw around when I'm not around coworkers.
> 3) Accept that it's hard to focus on stuff that doesn't interest me, and plan accordingly.
A former boss noticed this about me, years before I knew I had ADHD. It was pretty great. I tended to turn things around extremely quickly when I found them interesting. If he saw something was taking me a while or I wasn’t making progress after a couple days, he’d just give it to someone else. The net result was I got to pick my own projects, found the job much more interesting, and was significantly more productive. On the flip side of this, there were projects other people would struggle with for weeks that he’d give to me and I’d turn it around in a few hours.
These days I don’t find anything interesting and I’ve been trying to will myself to work on the same thing for 2 months (and another for 6+ months) and I can’t seem to do it. I really want to get past these things to find something new to do, but it’s been hard. The one project is massive as well. It had me looking at new career options yesterday.
Caffine is quite interesting because I often got even more tired after 30 minutes drinking some coffee.
The first 30 minutes indeed got me very excited, but then I will fall asleep soon after.
The same thing happened to me right now with energy drink such as Redbull or Monster. Therefore I mostly drink them for some competitive activities that only last short hours
I'm the same with coffee as caffeine, but I can drink a sugar free energy drink (Moister Ultra) and the caffeine in that does the job without any of the sleepiness sideffects.
* Monster Ultra
Check for other supplements in that stuff like turine and b12 b1 stuff. They can help with focus and mental energy.
Absolutely does include them. The quietening effect the first can had had never been replicated. But I still chase the feeling.
If stimulants relax you then medication would probably help, as it operates on a similar method.
> 4) Work in person
Im kinda the opposite, when im in an office, i somehow make sure no one else is getting work done
Out of curiosity, what dosages of caffeine do you take? No matter how much I take it never seems to be enough.
I have no idea if this will be useful to you, because it's so contingent on my caffeine sensitivity, my sleep, whether or not I've taken Vyvanse, what time of day it is, and what mental tasks I need to perform.
But to give a real answer:
On workdays I have about 20-40 fl oz of coffee during the morning. I stop all stimulants at noon so I can sleep.
On non-workdays I have 1-3 normal sized mugs of coffee in the morning, just because I like it.
Up to a litre of coffee in one morning is crazy from my point of view, but I guess it also depends on the way you prefer your bean drug: you're not drinking thirty shots of espresso, I hope?
Regular drip coffee maker, with a bean to water ratio that most would consider "normal". (I don't recall that actual ratio at the moment.)
He's talking ounces, I really doubt the guy is taking ristretto. Surely he's not from Italy!
Welcome to ADHD
ADHD people drink coffee as a form of self medication. Caffeine is an absolutely terrible and barely working stimulant for that purpose, so we end up drinking a lot to get some effect, or at least trick ourselves.
A cup of coffee is 6oz. I drink like 6-8 a day. I do however stick to average roasts, rather than robustas or light "breakfast" roasts.
My brother has that brain worm (that I used to have) where using a medication is "bad" so instead he drinks like 5 giant energy drinks a day.
My father drinks a similar amount of coffee as I do per day, and often drinks coffee as a late night relaxation aide. Stimulants can be "calming" to some people who have a certain genetic mutation and often have ADHD
The first dose of Ritalin I took, I immediately fell asleep and took a 2 hour nap.
Why is Vyvanse? UK based.
Vyvanse is like long acting adderall that cannot be crushed and snorted. Must be metabolized in your digestion to become active.
It's always extremely weird to me when people have to make this distinction because I was under the impression that ALL Adderall prescriptions are for the XR extended release which comes in capsules full of small beads of medication. No one should be taking Adderall IR instant release tablets. Those things have almost no reason to exist. I really don't understand who is taking those things and where people are getting the impression that IR tablets are a normal Adderall formulation. "Long acting" Adderall has been the norm for decades now and I haven't even seen or heard of anyone taking IR tablets since like the early 2000's
I was given a prescription for XR. It took me a month or more to even try it, because I’d sleep in, then it would take me a while to get moving, and by that time I was worried it would still be active with the idealist it me would think I should go to bed. Something that didn’t last as long would give me much more control.
Because there is ritalin and concerta, I think it's just easier to understand and explain. Im less familiar with adderall but by searching a few times IR XR and Vyvanse are still prescribed? and adderall ir is also approved for narcolepsy at least.
The XR mechanism is shit compared how vyvanse and concerts manage theirs.
If you’re a slow metaboliser you end up getting a big overlap around 3hours in which can be quite unpleasant, hence the non XR compound
If I take the lowest dose concerta I will not sleep that night no matter how early i take it. This was pretty devestating when I was younger and not mature enough to realize what was going on. Parents were obsessed with ADD medication at the time. I think vyvanse or xr adderall would be a similar nightmare for me.
Not to be confused with "Adderall XR", which like Vyvanse is meant for slower and longer release than normal Adderall.
At least for me, Vyvanse is much more tolerable than Adderall XR.
Thank you. Will ask my doctor.
Lisdexamfetamine, it’s very similar to Adderall but more expensive as it comes in capsules instead of tablets, but the upside is it lasts all day instead of a few hours. It recently became generic in the US, but is still around $60-120 a month’s supply (at least at my dosage), vs $25 or so for a month of Adderall.
Thank you.
Aka Elvanse in the UK
Notes on Managing ADHD offers clear perspective and practical advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45083134 The author frames strategy v/s tactics well, something seldom done [0].
Dr. Russell Barkley's youtube videos and book and the How To ADHD youtube channel are other resource I like and refer to, because they've surfaced useful information and perspective to me. How To ADHD is especially nice to share with friends / family / dear ones who happen to be in one's (erratic, surprising, incredibly fun, incredibly annoying, seemingly lawless) orbit.
[0] It irks me how many people say "strategies for ... xyz" when they're talking about procedures, or tactics, or personal hacks.
(edit: fix formatting, typo)
It's hard. I take concerta and have been laid off or fired more times than most people I know in long-term employment have had jobs. I take Concerta and drink Coffee, but I mostly just enjoy the coffee. It's really hard to stay on track sometimes, it's really hard to go too long without working on something inherently interesting to me. I'm constantly late and prefer late nights, I tend to always have a bad sleep cycle.
Really basic things that other people seem good at, I struggle. Taxes, finances, anything that requires ambient awareness of systems that have no clear feedback loops. Sometimes penalties for trivial things accumulate and it costs a lot of money. Goals, unless they're something like literally climbing a mountain, don't really motivate me. I don't have any financial or life goals at all, they seem artificial and silly.
Without stimulants, and a thankfully somewhat lenient company/client atm, I'd be screwed.
The positive is that I seem to be much better at making friends than most other people I know, and enjoy a variety of interesting hobbies. I'm also not that fearful or anxious about trying new things.
In terms of who I listen to about the topic, it's certainly not any entrepreneur types, it's mostly friends. Though Trevor Noah has a great podcast on the topic last April
https://pca.st/episode/19d903d2-bb2b-4213-837e-89a1af706ea0
Additionally, I cope by exclusion. I don't obligate myself to many things or events, and refuse to participate in group chats. I keep almost no notifications on, and people know that if they need my attention, they can just call me, otherwise I won't respond until I get around to it. I only buy gifts when I find inspiration to, and try not to spread myself too thin.
I also try to avoid easy things as much as possible. I failed at easy assignments, easy exams in school, why bother going through the rote motions for no other purpose than to be measured on my performance in doing them?
Oof. I feel this.
Especially the "easy things" bit. What an absolute waste of my time and focus to waste on trivial things that will just be measured against some standard, stale rubric.
Busy work for myself and the person receiving it.
But then, I tend to blow the scope of things I have to do in order to make it seem more important. And that means I extend "deadlines" or take longer to complete things. Oh well.
Part of accepting my ADHD is accepting that there is some truth to the feelings, that is, the notion of deadlines and urgency is usually so phony and unnecessary. My brain, my soul knows that something due at 5pm can absolutely be turned in the next day at 8am and nothing in the world will change.
> But then, I tend to blow the scope of things I have to do in order to make it seem more important. And that means I extend "deadlines" or take longer to complete things. Oh well.
Yep I do this too, in ways that would be absolutely comical to a normal person.
> Part of accepting my ADHD is accepting that there is some truth to the feelings, that is, the notion of deadlines and urgency is usually so phony and unnecessary. My brain, my soul knows that something due at 5pm can absolutely be turned in the next day at 8am and nothing in the world will change.
Yes, although it's helpful in some situations, most modern everyday systems have no intrinsically urgent or important timelines or consequences. The effect is hard to relate to anyone who panics for exams. There's been moments where my brain just knows the test I'm taking has no bearing on my future, and I'll just space out because it provokes no useful stress response.
People don't appreciate how much of their ability to be successful at work comes down to innate anxiety about what usually amounts to bullshit.
Plans, goals, routine, separation of concerns.
Instead of having a million different tabs open, use a tab session manager, save the stuff you want to read later, and keep open only stuff pertinent to things you are working on.
Prioritize your projects to have actionable goals.
When you procrastinate, try to do so by being productive on smaller projects.
Be aware of your own nature, and try to exert control over it. Recognize that not every idea or desire is useful, and learn to discard the ones that are not and investigate or give more attention to the ones that are.
Organization, take notes and organize them. I often have a scratchpad textfile open, that I then organize into sections (e.g. app ideas, ideas for specific code projects, movie ideas, whatever), break these up further into project or topic files. The ones that grow and get fleshed out are the ones worth pursuing.
Have a healthy sleep and recreation routine to not get burned out.
This is the opposite of what works for me.
Leaning a little into the the distractions, and building processes to quickly search and hop between things had made it better for me.
At the very least opening tabs with Ctrl+T, tab search with Ctrl+Shift+A, quickly closing them with Ctrl+W is my main workflow in Chrome-based browsers.
Once I get my speed up, I find distractions don't occur as often.
Emacs, org-mode, magit, and AI, combined with good sleep, weight lifting, stimulants, have almost completey nullified my ADHD problems.
It's been a hard slog to get here though.
I'd be curious to compare our efficiency and output.
But like, that's the thing isn't it?
You're dying.
Why cling to false narratives of "efficiency" and "output".
Be human. Be not bot.
I'm not dying anytime soon, as far as I plan.
I care about efficiency and output because I care about being able to be productive and not just letting my thoughts take me constantly astray.
Nothing to do with being a bot.
Literally just a text file? This is interesting to me. So many task app choices. But a bit of mark down nd notepad I think is a thing?
I have a few text files open at any one time. One is for a diary I keep, which changes for each month, so for example at the moment I have '2026 01.txt' open. I have a general to-do file and a tech todo file, and then notes.txt. When my notex.txt grows too long, which I define as having to scroll at all, I start to break it up.
When I break it up, I personally use latex files. I know everyone loves markdown, but I'm not a fan of Obsidian (closed source and electron, ugh), so I fell in love with TexStudio.
I have keybindings for simple macros to insert sections and subsections that I can quickly name, and these display in the navigation tree very well. TexStudio also allows multiple tex files open at once with a tabbedinterface, and allows saving sessions, so I can open one file to open all my, say, 'ai app ideas' notes. I've found this to work better for myself than any other available app or solution.
Eventually, I'd like to release a fork which would mainly be trimming stuff out rather than really adding anything in, but it's far from a priority for me at the moment.
I have so many text files (technically wikis and GDocs text docs, but I'm not doing more than lines of text). I was talking to a coworker today about our graveyard of pen and paper notebooks, todo apps, reminder thingies, post-its..
I need two things: ubiquity, so that I can add ideas, todos, etc. wherever I am; and exaggerated simplicity so that I don't end up turning the note solution into its own project that's abandoned or exchanged in a year.
Force yourself to use the same paper journal you carry around. Keep writing whatever comes in your mind, literally everything. Re-read the last day at day's end. Mitigation tecnique to empty your brain, leaving trails.
My eternal issue with paper is that it's not always physically on me. A phone, however, is.
GDocs/a wiki have actually worked well, though I don't do the re-reading. Just crapping it out into a known place works pretty well.
I use TaskPaper. It's essentially markdown lists with a few bells and whistles for managing items.
I have adhd, I write them down. Some of them are great ideas, some are shit.
I got diagnosed at 29. Up until then I was very entrepreneurial and ambitious, constantly working on business ideas. Hell I taught myself software engineering because I had a single idea I hyper focused on lol.
The way I see it, lean into it. ADHD is a double edged sword - you get intrusive thoughts, some of them are bad, but some of them are ideas.
You can’t really change your brain, you can take medication and it might help you focus a bit more.
But I say lean into it. I’ve had several successful ventures from pure ADHD fuelled idea binges.
I don’t really switch off, but I make sure I work in the office every day because being around people helps.
But when I’m alone it’s a barrage of thoughts, some days more intense than others.
There are alot of ADHD founders and programmers
Yep green and this is common “founder ADHD” thing. I just worry about the day today coping.
Honestly man I’ve just come to accept that I’ll be a little unfocused and wired, I’ve learnt there’s not much I can do about it.
We really need novelty so you’ll excel in environments that can offer that (travel, anything fast paced, transport roles like trucking etc)
Embrace the chaos, don’t fight it
I've taken it a step further and just operate on the notion that we weren't really meant to be "office drones". This lifestyle is new for humans.
We used to need people that were aware of their surroundings and able to create novel solutions to environmental challenges.
I leverage that as much as I can. Sometimes that means my "breaks" are actually rollerblading in the park while listening to music and weaving (very politely) between people.
Sometimes that means I workout and pretend I'm hunting or traversing some sort of chasm/river/etc.
It helps reduce the "death stench" that routine, monotonous work seems to give off.
First of all if you have the money get an official diagnosis. While self diagnosis is often right, ADHD symptoms can have overlap with many other things so it is better to be sure.
Now want a quick fix? If you can, get medication. It doesn't work for all people with ADHD but for those that it does it will give you the most bang for the buck.
Now there is coping strategies. Therapists can help a lot. There is also people offering ADHD coaching. This is great because the coaches tend to have ADHD themselves and understand you. It helped me personally a lot but be warned that everyone can offer coaching so quality may wary.
Last part is lifestyle. Sport. It is not optional. Running is amazing and will help you a lot but if you are not fit enough yet, walk. Walk every day for at least 30min. You need to. Also personally for me reading a physical book for at least 30min a day makes a huge, huge difference. Diet is important but what works varies from ADHD person to person. For me cutting out processed sugar was a good step.
Also no caffeine. This may also vary but completely cutting it helped me personally a lot. Yes, it helps somewhat with executive function but only in the short term and does more harm than good in the long term. Generally any form form of self medication be it alcohol, weed and so on, cut it out. Again get proper medication if you can.
Honestly accepting that you have ADHD or well at least some form of neurodivergency is already the biggest step. It gets so much easier once you learn how to properly manage it.
https://borretti.me/article/notes-on-managing-adhd
Came across this a few months ago on HN here and there’s a fair bit of exposition on things you’ve mentioned. My personal takeaway from it was to try Todoist, which has been a complete game changer in my life. I’ve used other systems before but something about Todoist worked better for my brain (plus the mobile integration is awesome… my second best over the years was org-mode but the mobile story is way too clunky)
+1, Todoist has changed things for me drastically.
I was diagnosed with ADHD a year and a half ago in my ~mid 30s. The meds (Vyvanse) help somewhat, but the real key to improvement for me has been using Todoist.
IME the real trick is using it consistently, and for everything. My routines (e.g. morning routine: meds, eat, coffee, brush teeth, brush the dog's teeth, etc etc) are all in Todoist, not because I struggle to focus on getting that stuff done in the morning (well, sometimes, perhaps) but because starting the day with do-easy-thing, mark-it-done, repeat, sets up the rest of the day to be run by Todoist instead of the bit of my brain that goes "I know we should be getting ready to leave but WHAT IF YOU WROTE AN APP TO DO THIS COOL THING, JUST QUICKLY TRY THAT NOW, YOU CAN LEAVE AFTER".
I had a similar experience with org-mode too. It was great at work where I'm at my desk all day, and made a huge difference, but not having a good mobile experience makes it impractical for day-to-day home use.
That was 100% the key for me too: put absolutely everything into it that I can’t address immediately, both work and life.
I did use org-mode like that too (all of life into it, not just work) when I was working from home but both capture and viewing when away from the laptop just had too much friction.
I found several Dr. Ned Hallowell's books helpful, see https://drhallowell.com/read/books-by-ned/ in particular "Delivered from Distraction" and "Answers to Distraction."
The Amen Clinics use PET scans of the brain to differentiate between seven types of ADD: https://www.amenclinics.com/conditions/adhd-add/ You may find these write-ups helpful in refining your understanding. Dr. Amen has a book that I found helpful https://www.amazon.com/Healing-ADD-Revised-Breakthrough-Prog...
I don't take stimulants beyond caffeine, I meditate most days at least once a day, which I find helpful, as well as not stay up too late. I keep a pad of paper by my bed to capture ideas. Working to music seems to help.
If you get a lot of ideas, you should reconcile yourself to only acting on a small fraction of them and worry less about all of the possibilities.
I try to take care to keep the commitments that I make, writing them down and tracking them. And here it is important to keep a close track.
I may be less impaired than you are, although many people have noticed I seem to get a lot of ideas. I collaborated with a partner on a book once, and at one point, about halfway through, he was frustrated with me and said, "You are a geyser of ideas. We don't need more ideas, we need to complete what we set out to do."
The "capture everything immediately" approach never worked for me. I'd end up with thousands of notes I never looked at again.
What helped was accepting that most ideas aren't actually that good - they just feel urgent in the moment. Now I use a deliberate friction test: if I still remember the idea after an hour without writing it down, maybe it's worth capturing. The truly important stuff has a way of recurring.
For the stuff that IS worth keeping, voice memos work better than typing for me. Lower friction means I actually do it, and listening back forces me to process rather than just hoard.
Bingo Bingo Bingo.
I learned of a name to how I have been at 32 years of age, and got formally diagnosed at 39. The trigger was my 6 year old acting like I did when I was 6 and seeing how much of a struggle it is for him and others around him.
Been titrating medication and reworking how I approach my work and personal life the last few months.
The thing about constant stream of ideas, micro ideas, while life pulls in different directions- kids, partner, social life, home needs etc is the struggle I am working on to manage better.
It sounds like we could share notes. Would you be interested to communicate over a private message? I’m based in the Netherlands.
P.s. I’ve got nothing to sell, influence or creep about. Genuinely someone on the same boat and I thought it would be nice to communicate with someone who can relate.
If you’d prefer - my email is aravindh at fastmail com
Perhaps you could encode your email address using Base64; this would reduce the amount of spam you receive from a publicly accessible email address:)
It is always a trade off of fighting spam versus actually communicating. Do I want this person to easily write to me without a lot of effort? Or do I pay the cognitive cost for my audience for the slight chance of win against spammers? I chose to stay simple.
In addition to other great suggestions (a good night's sleep being #1), two things come to mind:
- Write down thoughts that pop-up and seem potentially useful, and then forget about them. It's easier said than done, but you have to balance "this may seem useful later" with "I got better things to do now". For me, knowing I have the idea recorded somewhere puts my mind at ease.
- Feel free to just get rid of accumulated browser tabs, random to-do's or even mental notes. If you always have multiple things open, do a hard reset every now and then. It's difficult to let go at first, but you may realize that if an idea was really worth entertaining, it will come back to you. No great contribution is the result of one single thought, IMO.
Note: I lean closer to scattered attention than AD(H)D, because it doesn't affect my normal functioning. Sure, it gets progressively more annoying when deadlines are looming, but it also provides a great source of creativity.
Read the book ADHD is awesome. I read the audiobook during a recent solo trip to London because my son was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago and I wanted to understand him better and be more patient with him. I think a lot of it he gets from me and I relate to a lot of this stuff where where, all I want to do is work on these crazy ideas all day. I co-founded a non-profit that does electoral reform because I want to optimize everything. I learned Esperanto I type on a dvorak key map etc. everywhere I look all I see is things to be optimized. but I'm able to manage it fairly well to hold down a software engineering job. I think he has not learned that yet so he struggles. but reading this book helped me see him and understand him better instead of just getting frustrated with him.
Music is big for me - there are some good lists on YouTube.
Taking a few steps forward on something help me get over the initial paralysis. Get people to help you need priorities. I constantly check in with bosses to ensure I’m doing the most important thing.
Interesting about sleep, I definitely feel most productive in the morning after a solid night of sleep.
It has its downsides but a constant comment/compliment I get from friends how much I get done with my limited time. I have to always be doing something that consumes my attention or I’ll go nuts. I can’t watch sports for example because all the constant stops and starts make me lose my attention and go somewhere else.
If you want a fighting chance of being a functional, productive and a happy human being with ADHD:
1. Sleep well: have stable schedule & sleep enough
2. Meditate: practice to control your focus and withstand distractions
3. Move: run, lift-weights, bike, swim, just keep moving regularly
4. Avoid cheap dopamine: stop anything that gives you short, easy bursts of dopamine (such as doom-scrolling, binge watching, online-gaming, etc)
5. Write: keep notes, lists, events, to externalize your thoughts and keep track of things
By order of importance
Meds - the baseline, the scaffolding.
Sleep - up there or higher than meds maybe. Seriously, if you want to throw money at something, do it here.
Meditation - it trains your focus, gotta be the "shamatha" kind, i.e focusing on a single point of your body, say the tip of your nose as you breathe, and upon losing focus and thinking of something else returning to that anchor point.
App blocker - really important. No distractions/limit short form content
Diet - also really important, low carbs, healthy diet. Lots of fiber. Minimize glucose spikes.
Sunlight
Exercise - aids sleep, boosts cognition
I believe these to be the main ones. The thing is that it all loops back to impulsivity (your brain constantly churning ideas and following them), which realistically, in my experience, is mostly affected by meds, sleep, exercise (as you do it), and maybe over the long run, via meditation. I do believe the first two are the basis to everything.
I don't think what I experience is the exact same (maybe a different intensity), so I don't know if this will make sense.
For me caffeine makes it a lot worse, I'm pretty sensitive, on a lot of days I can't even drink a cup of coffee or it'll affect me. I also get a lot worse if I am letting a lot of tasks build up and I bounce around between them.
Ultimately what worked for me was developing the ability to not react to something crossing my mind. Like in your example right when the micro idea would cross my mind after going deep, I'd just let that micro thought have a few seconds to pass through my mind, and not react to it. I wouldn't give into the thought "I need to start doing this micro project!" or have any kind of reaction. Once the immediate reaction passed I would decide whether it's worth changing my focus.
This can also be used in the inverse, if I decide to go deep on something, periodically checking in to see if it's still worth going vs asking for help/input.
It's difficult, but try writing everything down, just to let it out at least. Don't expect a magic bullet here. At least for me, even though I'm medicated, the constant torrent of ideas, of thoughts, of context switching is exhausting.
I wrote about it briefly here: https://0xff.nu/adhd-productivity-fundamentals/
I honestly wish I could see the world, at least for one day, how neurotypical people see it.
I have ADHD, diagnosed in my 40s. 2 sons, a struggling business. Your experience seems familiar, so get diagnosed. If you do have ADHD then I don't think you should expect of yourself to be "fixed" to match the "average" norm. You will still be thinking about random stuff ("be creative"), it just will be a bit less of an issue in doing what is important.
What seems to work for me:
* meds
* writing everything down. This is not ADHD specific advice, I got it from GTD and it decreased anxiety. Just get used to the feeling that you will pull it out when you need it. I keep looking around for better solutions, but I no longer expect to have one that is perfect. Currently peeking back into Obsidian, for how flexible it is, but not abandoning OmniFocus and other tools I use.
* I prioritize regular sleep, but I allow myself digging deep in a subject that interests me from time to time
* physical work is surprisingly relaxing
* AI is becoming very important to me in completing tasks which are complex enough for me to get bored/tired/overwhelmed before reaching the finish line. A micro idea is great if you can tell Claude to implement it and come back to you. Even better when it succeeds :) The shorter time from starting to reward of completing is great for delivering.
* schedule some time for learning new stuff, otherwise you will become tired that it's all work and no fun
* delegate taking into account where you struggle the most. You might feel bad since you are delegating the most difficult work, but it might actually by trivial to people with brains with no such issues.
* not everything needs to be done, prioritize and don't worry about the less important stuff your brain throws at you
* it's more about setting time blocks to focus on something than reaching a specific goal. An hour scheduled in the calendar for support emails, for development, for reading...
* cheer up, we're entering the best period so far for people having ideas and you will have plenty
* [BONUS EDIT] noise-cancelling headphones :)
I'm also curious what others' takes are too. Lately I have found myself completely unable to remember things without writing them down or completely losing focus on a task and instead going off on "side quests." A close friend familiar with ADHD hinted that I probably have "late developing ADHD" and advised that I get evaluated/diagnosed.
The thought of that kind of scares me---I'm in my late 20s and tend to think I have functioned my whole life without needing any kind of coping strategy or technique to keep myself on top of my work, but now I am facing the possibility that I might just have to start doing things differently, and I'm not sure where to start.
Aside from actually getting diagnosed, are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?
> are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?
How do you tend to spend your time?
What percentage of your time is spent on activities that benefit from rapid context-switching and short periods of concentration? (Examples might include watching short-form content, browsing/commenting on online forums, most video games, navigating most cities, and working in certain environments).
How much time do you spend on activities that benefit from the opposite? Sustained concentration and attention with minimal interruptions. (Examples might include watching movies, reading novels, some video games, navigating countryside, and working in certain environments).
Our bodies and minds adapt to the demands we place on them. If you're sedentary all day you'll lose muscle mass, cardio endurance, etc.
Late 20s/early 30s is when I started to notice the costs associated with my lifestyle becoming more apparent. The prophylactic effects of youth start to wear off and you realise that you are what you eat, in a multitude of ways.
There are some really good suggestions in this thread: sleep, exercise, medication. Therapy also helps some.
Externalizing my brain helped massively before I was diagnosed. Pages and pages of notes -- both to write an idea down to move away from it and as a way to make sure I do a task. It's way easier for me to accomplish something if I can obsessively plan it out in advance, and it's way easier to stop rolling an idea around in my head if I jot it down (potentially to be never entertained again.)
It's a later step after diagnosis, but my doctor told me I'd be surprised at how effective medication can be. They were 100% right. It's not a cure all and it's not without potential side effects, but it makes me sad that it took me so long to approach my primary doctor about the issues.
But as a side note, the medical info I've read makes a pretty firm statement that there is no late developing ADHD. One if the diagnostic criteria is that the symptoms occurred during childhood. Coping and your environment may affect the disorder's effect on your life, but it's with you for your life. _However_, adult diagnosis is very real. Your environment changes so much as you age, and it may or may not make ADHD worse. I'd talk to your primary doctor with an open mind, both for what may be going on and for how to deal with it.
There are endless systems, tools, and strategies.
Carefully consider your environment. I perform best with very little going on around me. In my physical environment and on my PC. Austere. Minimize things that catch your brain and eye. One or two apps at a time, close everything else. Pick your one more important thing every day and work on that. It needs to be a contract. Usually you have one or two important things to be doing and you can ignore everything else without too much consequence.
To remember things you need an ironclad todo system that lets you very quickly capture anything you need to remember. You need to be able to record, triage, filter, prioritize, and execute on anything you need to remember. If any one of those stages is leaky you won't trust it and it won't last. My entire life is structured around managing it. I have to have very strong discipline. House must be spotless. Desk must be spotless. Try to work in the same place at the same time every day. Environmental and contextual stability is huge. Your brain must associate a particular desk, chair, place with doing the most important things. If you allow yourself to goof off or do other things in that place you are losing the fight.
Working out fixes a lot for me too. I workout or my mood and motivation falls apart. Move or die. Again, consistency is key. Everything I do around environment is to reduce the need to use executive function. It is finite and fickle for people with ADHD. The more you have to think and convince yourself to do things the less likely you are to do them. You need consistent cues. "Sit down here, start timer, means work on main thing and nothing else." If you can have discipline at all of these external things, the work can just happen and there is a kind of freedom in that.
Program outlets. Give yourself set, specific time to explore the sidetracking. Don't tell your brain no. Tell it "later". It helps if you know there is time for the extra thoughts. That there is a relief valve.
Also, drugs. I use prescribed stimulants. There are some unpleasant negative things, but I can function with them and life is better with them. But it isn't some magical cure. You still have to be organized and willing to work on your tasks or you will just be really focused on things you don't really need to be doing.
I could write so much more, but that is some top of mind stuff that I think sits at the top of my hierarchy of being productive. Oh and you may need to have some conversations with future you. How is future you, a week, month, year from now going to feel if you burned a lot of time on side quests?
What is “late developing adhd” bar the obvious?
I don't know much about it other than it's apparently just ADHD that doesn't manifest until adulthood.
Write them down somewhere you know you’ll come back to them. This lets your brain let go and stop chewing on them.
Review what you’ve written down fairly frequently (weekly or so). You won’t have enough capacity to act on all or even most of it. Extract the most important items.
Put the rest in a “someday/maybe” list that you review rarely (quarterly or annually) to keep your brain satisfied that they’re not lost permanently. When reviewing this list you can remove anything that no longer interests you.
I think there a lot of good points from others about symptom management, but I think switching off is actually pretty important too. I'm finding that fixing my procrastination and task initiation issues with medication and systems has left me more tired, as I'm doing more.
Everyone is different, but I think for ADHD people we can't be still to recuperate. I'm giving knitting a try, it's a pretty meditative activity, with a low cognitive load. My husband plays video games.
Getting out in nature is good. Walking, biking. I bought a onewheel just for the novelty of floating around the neighborhood.
A strong cardio session in the morning. Be careful with caffeine. Use L-Theanine tactically. Have a very strict schedule with time blocks.
If you have thoughts in your mind you can't put away, write it all down on pen and paper (draw if possible). Take only 5 minutes. Then tell yourself you will come back to it at a better time. Once in a while sort the ideas and schedule when to think about them if they are worth exploring. It's key to order them as it makes you feel in control.
> I have ADHD. I think.
then think about talking to a medical professional, and a therapist, and coming up with your own coping strategies.
> How do you manage the constant stream of thoughts and ideas?
take notes of ideas and come back to them later when you have time.
My ideal is document everything. Every idea. All thoughts. Links. Ides I have. Then thoughtfully come back to them.
My idea is document everything. Every idea. All thoughts. Links. Ides I have. Then thoughtfully come back to them.
Get tested. Get it treated. It could change your life. No joke. It's not a big deal. I know there's a stigma, but really, it's not a big deal. 15%+ of the population has it. Just go get it checked out. Promise.
Well you don't manage them. If you really find something interesting, you often start writing it down in some work already...for example `cargo new` and then add a bunch of packages, start getting it working on...
That's exactly what I've been having for the last 20 years. If something motivates you, you do it non-stop, until you are bored, switch to the next thing...it happens around 2 to 3 days during the "hype" period, then you suddenly got off to new things.
That's why I have hundreds of POCs and toy projects at hand, but only a few of them materialized.
> for example `cargo new` and then add a bunch of packages, start getting it working on...
That's how I ended up with 85 subfolders in my `Projects`, most of them are empty or have a lone README.md. :'(
Get on medicine. It’s the thing that actually changed my life.
That, and learn what adhd actually does, stuff like issues prioritizing tasks, sudden impulsive thoughts, “the adhd wall”, RSD, weak inner voice, etc. It’s much easier to handle if you understand it and can differentiate between something like an impulse and regular thoughts.
I recommend watching videos from Dr Berkeley on YouTube on how to manage adhd. There are lots of tricks like making things physical (time, tasks), or using with external consequences to combat weak inner voice
not Berkeley, its Russell Barkley. He's done a few hundred videos after he retired from the day job, but now he's 72 and really retired, so it's back to Google scholar we go... :-)
Short answer: trauma therapy. Process all the shit from the past to fundamentally and slowly calm down my nervous system. I am safe now.
Low dose extended release Adderall. I feel completely myself. It helps me make conscious choices about transitions between tasks. I don’t get irritated by interruptions. When I transition, it’s easier to put down what I was doing before and take up the new task.
If you think you have ADHD, try getting evaluated by a clinician. It’s not hard to do. A good clinician can go over the range of behavioral and medication options and assess for comirbidities like autism.
The game changer for me was atomoxetine. Also, getting vitamin deficiencies under control (D/B12).
I often work on several projects at the same time, and that sort of "keeps everything interesting"; I also have some personal projects, that may or may not get attention depending on my enthusiasm. I often take notes on things/thoughts/ideas, but they work mostly as a mnemonic to help me recall details.
> Oh and how do you switch off?
That's the trick :) I dont.
You’re not alone a lot of founders and builders experience this ADHD-like pattern: intense curiosity, deep focus, then idea overload. Your brain is optimized for exploration, not maintenance, which is why vision comes easy and follow-through feels hard. What helps is having one place to dump ideas, time-boxing deep work, offloading admin, and keeping tools minimal. Switching off is still tough, but physical activity, hard stop routines, and accepting rest as part of productivity make a real difference.
Yeh rest is a good one. Something craved but hard to attain (sitting here on HN at midnight UK)
I have lived my entire life with ADHD: Forget about getting "everything" done, instead periodically reprioritize and keep putting your focus onto these priorities, everything that is actually important enough to get done will and everything else can be done by someone else -- just sit tight. This works for software especially so, just sit and wait for someone more fool hardy with more to lose to do the truly annoying things and then adopt their work if it helps your priorities.
1. Get assessed by a psychiatrist for ADHD.
2. If you're diagnosed, start medication and see if it works for you - it's by far the intervention with most evidence behind it for alleviating ADHD symptoms. It's not for everyone but for many of the people it helps starting medication is an absolutely life changing decision in the best possible way.
+1 to this, but not necessarily in response to your question - but so that you can stay on top of all the errands that build up over the course of your life, and that materially benefit you! The sense of security from that has notably improved my work.
I’m diagnosed adhd. If you’re like me, you cannot switch it off. Medication helps a lot with the negative effects, but the stream of ideas is never turned off, it’s just way more manageable, and you feel more in control. That has been a huge improvement to my mental health.
Weed does help sometimes, though I would not say the stream is turned off, but a lot of things go in the background, if that makes sense.
It’s cliche but I would recommend to see a psychiatrist for diagnosis and a therapist
Weed helped me for a moment, but I had to use the right kind. So much of it right now is do high in THC that it made things worse.
It had to be a good mix of THC and CBD and other terpines for the entourage effect.
I realized also that ingesting it as controlled oil drops was best. As I could get the same, consistent level.
For me, it just relaxed me enough that, though the engine was still running , I didn't feel like I HAD to redline it all the time. I could just chill and mellow out. And that it's okay to chill and mellow out sometimes.
I write them down in Obsidian, my calendar, or my reminders app and then revisit it accordingly. If it's something I need to address later, then whatever + Reminders, because I don't want the mental tax of having to remember to do something later.
Flagitate is a real word, by the way, and means to demand things urgently and passionately. I suppose if you were a "flagitating laser beam", you would have a laser-like focus on the things you demand. This is separate from being distracted.
1) Same. I hate wasting time by ADHD walk mode.
2) Atomoxetine works for me. For managing thoughts, I recommend to just write markdown text every day by create new file every month like "diary.2026.01.md". Then you can track daily tasks and medium/long term goals. I get easily distracted when using TODO apps.
3) Sleep.
Whether a personal attribute is a strength or a weakness seems to depend heavily on context.
The key for any us may be to just find people we can work with who have different attributes, resulting in balanced partnership.
I have at least some anecdotal evidence to support pairings of compatible and complementary ADHD and HFAS minds.
Character is probably the most important single element, however.
1/ Chose a career as a Data Scientist, which benefits from intense focus. 2/ All the thoughts and tasks that i get in my head, if tasks are small, i try to do some of them immediately. Otherwise, i write it down, and keep a sticky which i close at the end of the day. 3/ Am 40, I have a partner, who has slowly realized that i am different, and since the past few years she coaches me to do tasks i dont like (submit expense reports). I happily give her pocket shopping money in exchange. 4/ I take notes at every meeting, Notion is my tool. 5/ Switching off, what's that? I realize my teams think that i am a maniac, and my wife thinks am too obsessed. I help my team do things, and tell them i can come across as too hot, and they need to let me to know to backoff. I like to watch movies, and do take a break from time to time.
Before I got medicated, DMAE and Gotu-Kola extract (nothing to do with Cola/Caffiene) worked pretty well. Pramiracetam if you spend enough $ and can find it, but it will make you more of a logical robot so your social life and loved ones will suffer -- I used sparingly
Adderall XR + to-do lists
For work purposes I keep hand written To Do lists that I re-write every week or so
This is in addition to the teams Jira tickets and Scrum etc
There is no "switching off" your just f-ed
Interstitial journaling is a great way to keep regaining focus easily.
Meditation helps Sleep as well
(I am not a doctor.)
> I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure.
I take your hedging to mean you are probably self diagnosing. It's worth talking to a doctor and getting the ball rolling on a formal diagnosis. ADHD is not the only diagnosis with those symptoms. For instance bipolar and autism spectrum disorder. Again, not a doctor, take that with a grain of salt.
There are probably new tactics you can adopt in this thread, and they may help and are worth trying. Advice which is actionable today is valuable. But if this is severe enough to disrupt your life, the best strategy is a combination of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes (eg exercise).
Easier said than done, I know. I have my own issues I'm struggling with and I get it. I'm in the midst of trying that same three pronged approach.
Please also understand that these diagnosis do not all have the same consequences for not treating them. If you don't want to pursue formal diagnosis and treatment, that is your right, but I would urge you to investigate whether or not you are bipolar in any case. If you have your first manic episode, and you don't understand that is what is happening, it could be dangerous. What you're describing sounds more like ADHD to me personally but is not inconsistent with hypomania either. Again, not a doctor, grain of salt.
Note that if you ever want to be a pilot, THINK VERY HARD BEFORE GETTING DIAGNOSED OR MEDICATED. This doesn't apply to most people, but it is the major gotcha on an otherwise straightforward decision.
/r/flying is full of people who wish they didn't have this in their medical record. The FAA is totally backwards about medical stuff and has a very dim view towards ADHD & associated meds.
I've been told that the military also won't take people who have a prescription for Ritalin; not sure if that's true.
OCS wouldn't return my calls, but I think that was more due to my GPA than my prescription for Ritalin.
I'm disappointed to acknowledge you have a point. Shame on the FAA for pushing people into the closet with this.
If one did want to become a pilot, I do think it would be critical to determine whether or not they were prone to manic episodes. That really could be very dangerous to a pilot and their crew, passengers, etc.
Also, from my 15 minutes of preliminary research, I don't think that applies to pilots of ultralights. So if your dream is simply to fly, it's still achievable.
Manic episodes is not and ADHD symptom, you're looking at bipolar here. Please.
Yes, you are correct. My point is that a lot of people who self diagnose as ADHD have a different disorder that causes executive function issues, and it's important to rule out bipolar because it has very different consequences. I don't care if someone with untreated ADHD or ASD flies a plane, but untreated bipolar disorder could actually be dangerous. (Not a doctor.)
This came up on HN recently. I don’t have the link.
Get the $200/m Claude code subscription and make all the dreams come true.
> I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure.
You might be right, but until you get a professional diagnosis you can't really be sure. Hacker-news will disagree but it is impossible to be objective about your own mental health. The good news is that if you do have adult ADHD, it is treatable (much more so than other conditions like depression).
Some people might try to spin it as something cool, but that last "d" stands for disorder. It's a disorder and NOT a "founder thing", regardless of what Paul Graham thinks. ADHD can do enormous damage to your life, relationships, and professional development.
Adderall OR finding a job that 100% matches your interests.
What quietened the “thousands of competing thoughts” that used to go through my brain constantly was an ADHD diagnosis and then medication (methylphenidate / Concerta XL in my case, I tried lisdexamfetamine / Elvanse first but it did nothing for my ADHD symptoms. Everyone responds differently to the various medications, you may have to try several until you find one that works for you).
The diagnosis/medication route isn’t for everyone but, in my case, it is a thousand times better than trying any systems/strategies unmedicated.
Medication alone isn’t a magical cure but it gets me to the point where various systems/strategies do start to work.
Also whilst medicated I don’t get as distracted anywhere near as easily. If I do think of something else I can write it down and go back to what I was working on.
Whilst medicated I don’t try and keep track of 4 different conversations going on around me whilst not giving enough attention to the actual person I’m supposed to be listening to and talking to.
Whilst medicated I don’t just endlessly write, rewrite or reorder TODO lists, I can actually start (and finish!) items on that list. This means I’m not just motivated by stress/deadlines, I can get things done way ahead of the last minute.
An ADHD diagnosis and medication has been utterly transformational in my life.
I tried a whole host of stuff in the years before I finally went for an official diagnosis. In hindsight I wish I’d spoken to my doctor years earlier but, guess what, people with ADHD procrastinate.
Lastly, I now no longer have to expend huge amounts of energy masking my ADHD symptoms. Prior to diagnosis I didn’t realise just how much of a toll this was taking on me and I just attributed it to 25 years of working in the IT industry and possible burnout.
I’m not diagnosed but have a high correlation condition (APD) which explains my inattentive ADHD ways that only my closest people basically knew were there the whole time.
After reading a book about APD, I felt like I was reading reports written about my life. I told my late wife’s best friend and she was like “she knew the whole time, you drove her crazy sometimes”. I was blissfully ignorant.
I drink a lot of coffee as a baseline and have since high school. I’m afraid of stimulant drugs and won’t pursue them.
The one thing that I love that truly changed my life for the better is running. I started at 45 after a series of really awful events. I’ve never felt such a clarity of mind and feeling.
I wish I had known about it in my teens. I went through alot of shitty times without understanding why. Life moved on, but I wasted alot of opportunity and missed some things that I regret a bit.
Run (or bike or whatever gets you) and get to know yourself. Know what you want, and when you embark on a side quest, stop and see if you are going where you want to be.
Some interesting points here
https://x.com/i/status/2010374486613176474
Two schools of thinking I flip flop between to rationalize however I'm currently behaving:
a.) Ideas not meaningfully capitalized on are no more useful than delusions. Force yourself to focus with tools.
b.) Don't worry about it; you should be able to think and imagine freely in and about the environment the world has presented you with. When you have The One Right Idea™, you'll know, and it'll be like it's putting itself together in front of you. Allow yourself kindness, understanding, and leniency; only then will your output be pure. Or something.
Maybe it's good to have some of both of these. Maybe I should plan for them in advance.
Hmm b) is hard. When is the right idea ignored for next shiny brain thought?
Sleep. Coffee. Focus music. Non-stimulant medication.
I wouldn’t suggest amphetamines. It’s what some/most doctors prescribe for ADHD, but unlike drugs that are generally ok like caffeine and statins, amphetamines can have long-term negative effects. In-general, avoid controlled substances.
I tried some of the Dr. Amen supplements, but they wired me up too much like I was on amphetimines, so I had to stop.
I just take Ginseng now, and it works well.
Eating carrots, eggs, and spinach are also good. Fasting a little helps me focus. I have an MTHFR mutation, so if I eat things with too much folic acid, I get brain fog; breads, cereals, etc. contain it- anything with enriched flour. I tried 5-methylfolate for a while, but it didn’t help.
Managing ADHD this way for me is a lot safer. When I was taking meds, I was either taking 50% levoamphetamine and was intolerant, always right, over-the-top on top of things (when I was best at chess!) and no one wanted to work with me or was taking (dextro)amphetamine and focused but on the wrong things.
You don’t have to be perfect. If you have ADHD, you have to be ok with that. There is no pill that will make everything right forever. And maybe 20% of people are right there with you.
Still, try your best to not be a burden. Even when you feel like all is lost, and you’re tired of everything, you’ll have more to give, and life is going to throw something at you to prove it. Life may not be reasonable, but so what?
I perform better on days I have walked. I'm walking 10k steps (4km by my Garmin) a day, I want to reach 10km a day. It also helps my anxiety, my therapist says it manages to burn off excess energy and helps regulate my emotions.
I also am one of the few people who can walk and read at the same time, either from an ereader, phone or a book (as long as the size is manageable). I read and comprehend better when I am walking. It's crazy, but I'm a klutz when I'm not reading. When I'm walking I pay far better attention to the road as well.
201 orders on Amazon this month lol…
Stimulants.
I write them down. I've been following the GTD system(using org-mode with the excellent org-gtd package). The basic concept is just that you write down things when they pop into your head. Once a day, you go through the list of stuff you wrote down and sort it into categories like "do this asap", "this is a multistep project with these individual steps that I can work on over time", "This is a habitual task that repeats on some interval. "maybe do this some day", or just discard it. I definitely get the flurry of ideas you describe. But not just ideas, mundane shit I gotta do. I'm at the store and a thought will pop into my head like I gotta clean the filter in my washing machine. Or I'm at home coding and I remember I need to buy milk. But when I'm at the store, I don't remember the milk. And when I'm at home, I don't remember the pump filter. So not only do these things not get done, they keep popping up in contexts where I can't do anything about them, and distracting me from what I'm actually trying to do.
GTD helps address that disconnect. The thought pops up, I dump it in the inbox. It is now "dealt with", asynchronously, and the thought can stop bouncing around my head. If it pops up again, I remember that I wrote it down, and let it go. Sometimes I'm not sure, so I just write it down again, no biggie if it gets duplicated.
And it also serves as a filter. So many of my ideas are just silly flights of fancy that, when I'm confronted with them even the next day, I already hate them, and just discard them.
It took me months to get used to it, and get consistent with even remembering to write stuff down. But you get better at it, and eventually you'll have less random thoughts bouncing around your head all the time. It's actually helped me be less stressed and calmed me down a bunch.
It's important to note that the system is ever evolving. It wraps in on itself. As I use the system, ideas and frustrations about the system pops up. I write them down as well, and if actionable, do something about them. So for instance, my list of "asap" tasks was getting cluttered with: groceries I need to buy, various changes to my emacs/wm/OS configuration, things that needed to get done, but were not really urgent, like "clean the shower". Obviously cleaning the shower is a good idea, but it's not like the world will end if I don't do it right this minute. This resulted in me always having more of these single tasks that I could typically finish in a day, which was distracting, because there were all these items on my agenda pulling my mind in different directions. So I herded these things into places where they make more sense. Made a shopping list and a wishlist. The shopping list gets synced to my phone and I have a widget for it via the orgzly app(which I also use as my mobile inbox). These things are not on my agenda, because whenever I'm looking at my agenda I'm not in a position to buy milk. "Config stuff" is now its own list, and I have a weekly habit item where I spend a couple hours on stuff in that list. I don't touch it otherwise and it doesn't clog up my agenda. More tedious, less urgent chores have their own list as well, and I similarly try to spend at least an hour a week on those.
Now, the block of my agenda with these "single tasks" will rarely be more than 5 tasks, most of them taking less than 10 minutes. I can easily clear it almost every day. And if I have a bad day and do nothing, the list is still manageable the next day. And ofc I made a daily habit item to that effect. That contributes to a sense of mastery, and I also get to work on the "fun stuff" without being plagued by guilt about all the other tasks I'm neglecting. Fuck yes.
Now I'm noticing another issue, that I'm getting an increasing list of these multistep projects. And I'm currently working on making a weekly review process where i prioritise projects. Ideally, I want a list of active projects with an explicit goal that I should check off at least one subtask in every active project in a week. And a procedure to manage which projects are active, not active, etc. that way I can keep my agenda free of projects that I've fallen out of love with that just sit in my agenda making me guilty.
Of course, the GTD book goes into all of this in detail. But I don't have the book. I prefer to develop this system myself, incrementally. One major issue I've had in the past with these systems is a sort of "system overwhelm", where the ADHD tendency to take things too far leads me to "commit" to adopting some ambitious, complicated system virtually overnight, and it's good for a couple days. Then I have a bad day, fail to follow it, and the ADHD propensity to see myself as a failure takes over, leading me to discard the system because I think I'm just not capable of following it. No more. Start with something dead simple, that you can do even on your shittiest days. Write some stuff down, go through it the next day. Just do that one thing. If after processing the inbox, all you can manage is to fuck off and play video games all day, fine. It's ok to have bad days. I certainly still have them. But even people with ADHD can develop habits. We're just bad at the initial phase ehere the habit isn't automatic yet. So make it at simole as possible at first, and then build on it slowly over time is my main advice.
>I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure. I have thoughts, ideas, projects, concepts, links, things to read... fired at my brain all day every day. I can go deep on a topic for hours, but then be hit by a barrage of micro ideas. I really struggle to stay on track and focus. Oh and I run a business, manage people, try to make a profit. It's hard. And kids. And life?
This isnt adhd. It's an awful lot like adhd but isnt unique or something that would be a diagnosis.
At most you're diagnosing high curiosity and obviously openness. Just a personality type. Common of people who were exposed to the internet since childhood. You're probably dating yourself as a millennial; late 30s?
>I think there is a founder/ADHD thing. Paul Graham thinks so. Maybe even a tech person angle. What have other people experienced?
On either side of this personality traits. You have the thinkers who make connections and invent new things. So they are great at startups and entrepreneurship. But the moment the business gets beyond this step. They fall away.
The opposite personality is one who doesnt make new connections or invents new things, but knows how to execute and follow through.
Ive seen it happen in tech and politics many times now. It's something Elon musk learnt in university. You have to give up your baby to be raised by someone who can raise it right.
>And how do others cope? I don't really know this world. I do know that my old boss once called me a "flagitating laser beam". I think he meant distracted. I use a bunch of systems to cope. For a long time lists, and then Asana. Asana ruled my life. I just built my own thing to capture tasks, projects, but also knowlegde. Not sure if it will help we will see.
a couple paragraphs on the internet will never get you a diagnosis of adhd... but there are tests online that might guide. I was a huge trello fan until atlassian ruined it. Ive been thinking of coding a trello-like into my home django project.
>- Who else feels this way? - How do you manage? - Oh and how do you switch off? That is hard
Why switch it off? There is training of course; you need to learn when to listen to your guardian angel. mindful meditation will help. Go buy a muse EEG. Do get the sleep one even though its more expensive.
But no 'switch off' it's about keeping it, but being able to tell your brain not now.
What you need is an assistant or partner. Luckily for you, if you cant afford someone, you can use AI.
weed and booze.