Do you know any programmers who exhibit these personality traits?

There was once a monk who would carry a mirror where ever he went. A priest noticed this one day and thought to himself “This monk must be so preoccupied with the way he looks that he has to carry that mirror all the time. He should not worry about the way he looks on the outside, it’s what’s inside that counts.” So the priest went up to the monk and asked “Why do you always carry that mirror?” thinking for sure this would prove his guilt.

The monk pulled the mirror from his bag and pointed it at the priest. Then he said “I use it in times of trouble. I look into it and it shows me the source of my problems as well as the solution to my problems.”

Where was I again? Oh yes, I do know someone just like the OP describes. I see his face whenever I look at this shiny piece of glass I carry.

Inability to multi-task = ability to focus

Inability to manage or even to “see” certain classes of “mundane” details = ability to distinguish the difference between and "issue" and a "detail"

Inability to organize = lack of the need to organize because of intense focus on the most important thing

Capable of working through entire books of information because of the ability to distinguish between "issues" and "details" (see above)

Capable of coming up with pretty good project ideas on his own = creativity

unusual degree of empathy = understands the "big picture"

Faults tend not to show up terribly badly but only to those tuned in to the "superficial", not the "important"

If he can team up with... = understands synergy

Is this guy sick? = a one eyed man in the land of the blind

Honestly, I think it's genetic. A bunch of my dad's relatives are also like this, and from stories I've heard of him, I think my grandfather was too. If you're working with someone like this, it's best just to find some way to use his talents while keeping his weaknesses from being too disruptive (eg. send him off prototyping this pie-in-the-sky idea while everyone else handles the day-to-day minutiae of getting stuff done). If you are this person, find a profession where the strengths matter and the weaknesses don't. Like research, or tech startups.

It's possible to overcome these personality traits with enough effort, but the good goes away with the bad. I found my concentration plummeted as I became more socially adept, as did my ability to come up with crazy-off-the-wall solutions that nobody else thought of. And I notice a big, big performance penalty from multitasking, moreso than most people.

"Curing" these problems with drugs or psychiatry sounds like a horrible idea. This sounds like a pretty accurate description of me (as I'm sure it is for a lot of us). If you offered me the ability to trade whatever makes me special for the ability to do mundane things I would tell you to piss off 100 times in a row.

Good for that guy. I bet we'll all benefit from something he created due to his "character flaws".

What's missing, here, though, is the techniques to deal with this - yourself, without needing to be in an environment that condones your habits.

I've got most of those traits. Yet I survived 4 years in a large business consulting corporation, which is very unforgiving of this type of personality. And I'm now running my own business. Both of those activities are highly incompatible with the ADHD programmer mind.

How to do it? Well, there are many components to it. I should probably write them up on my blog one of these days. In fact, I've been planning to, and I probably will soon.

About 2 years into grad school is where they started to really hurt me. I can't absorb many details verbally, and this never hurt me in classes. When doing research, however, many ideas concerning the details existed only in my mind or my adviser's mind. Mundane details also became extremely important, and finishing projects is crucial.

General suggestion: be active about organization.

Some specific suggestions:

Use source control for ALL projects, and follow "best practices." It's a matter of personal discipline as much as a way to go back in time.

Track your projects/tasks/subtasks: I like http://www.rememberthemilk.com , but a small notebook would probably be sufficient. Pick a task you are doing right now, focus on that 100%, cross it off when finished. Pick the next task, do that 100%.

For all projects, specify an end point, or at least a point at which one stops to reevaluate.

The good news: if I could improve myself in this regard, anyone can.

If so, one of the reasons he might have a hard time absorbing details given to him verbally: for a visual thinker, there's a point where spoken verbage (without the aide of note-taking) becomes overwhelming. It's why most of us loathe the telephone.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253191

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222451

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232632

If he can team up with a solid detail oriented checklist/calendar type person, he can be an awesome supplement to a team or company. This doesn’t always pan out due to personalities and politics, but when “the stars are aligned” things can really hum.

Fortunately my situation diverges with the spouse thing. My wife perfectly fits the detail oriented quote above. She laughs at me when I take a counter full of dishes and wash everything except one pan. I feel bad for his(?) "friend" that the situation hasn't worked out so well for them.

I have always disqualified myself because of this part:

Capable of working through entire books of information; does especially well with brief descriptions/examples followed by exercises. Capable of working for extended periods of time.

He does not give a shit about the minutiae of life. He just doesn't care in an intrinsic level. He does not get satisfaction out of it. And that is a good thing in the long run, because those kind of tasks, as important as they may seem to some, really get you nowhere in life. Let the bureaucrats be bureaucrats and create things like java.

I obviously share many of these traits, and I know for a fact that I was slower than many of my peers in school, and later at work. I just had to spend more time doing the same amount of work. In the end though, I was able to produce similar results, albeit with more effort on my part.

1.

Organize stuff around you. Make a hobby out of it, see beauty in organization. The things that are lying around you, and they way they lie around represent you. Any thing you do carries a bit of your personality and nothing does more easily so than clutter ( or the lack of it ). Think of the space around you as a painting - how would you want it to be? What this brings is clarity, clarity is a prerequsite for focus. Good cooks have clean kitchens, great programmers indent/refactor.

2.

I am unaware of the passage of time mostly. You wake me, hand me a book and ask me after 10 hours how long it has been, I would say something like 2 hours. This is not good when you are working on a programming problem which has a deadline which doesnot permit degression. You have to do it now. To remind myself of the passage of time, I run a watch command on my linux terminal and make it play a sound every 5 minutes. At the end of every 5 minutes I mark a point in a paper. If I was working on the problem or was working on some GREATER cause. If I catch myself working for the greater good, I give myself a 0 for those 5 minutes, else a 1. When you monitor yourself like this, the mear act of monitoring and putting your awareness on how you deal with your time at a minute level makes you focus.

( This is like rescuetime, but I want the conscious act of marking on a paper, I think this is what helps me on a real time basis than the rescuetime report. Besides, even when I have my editor open, I might wander into thinking about the greater good. Only I can hold myself accountable in the end! )

3.

When I want to not focus but be creative ( yes, they seem to be opposite states of mind, I know this from my own experience ): Say I am desiging a large project or want inspiration I go for a long walk into the evening sun( Leave your cell at home dammit ). The walking motion has something which someone will probably explain using neurology in 20 years, but for now, take it from me: for Creativity/Design walk. If I have a small scale design problem like how to frame this function I walk inside my room, in the form of 8 ( or infinity which ever catches your fancy ).

4.

Caffine helps a lot, after a while the act of holding and sipping hot liquid takes over as a placebo, so you can experiment with various other less harmful stuff. ( yes, I can fool myself: its my gift and my curse ). Trance music helps too, The flow of most transmusic has a sense of urgency and it helps to absorb that into your psyche and show it in your action. I am currently using pandora for transmusic.

But the observation that the good will go with the bad is very true. I believe that this is an engineering trade off that has been built into some of our minds. Very much like risc vs cisc. We just need to learn how to consciously switch to the other mode. Because afterall the real strength lies in the "visionary streak".

I am still learning all these stuff myself, but someone said that if we had a word for teaching while learning and learning while teaching, the world would be a better place.

I even did the cleaning thing today on my desk; some important papers get pushed together, others got binned. Things that don't really have a place are still lying around.

I find that when I work with organised people, I do very well.

To manage it, force the opposite. If this person is micro-managed, he/she can be a star. I've seen it happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator

There are quite a few medications that might help, like Stratara, Wellbutrion, Ritalin, etc.

I'm not recommending this by any means (not being a doctor and all), but it's probably worth a look.

But yes, I think I'm like this person. Of course.

It's the new witch hunt.