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Comment by Zaofy | Hacker News Reader

I'm reading this while having my mailbox open on my second screen containing various high priority issues that I should _really_ take care of. Ironically the more I have to do, the less I finish.

Luckiyl my adhd meds should kick in in about an hour making it much easier to focus on taking care of things.

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the more I have to do, the less I finish

It’s interesting that we know and appreciate that there will be more work tomorrow and next week, but when you see it in advance, it pushes you to the bed.

One thing that [somewhat] helps me with it is breaking down the next thing into a list of pretty trivial tasks on paper, while leaving the rest at where it came from. Makes you focus on what’s here and now. Out of sight, out of mind. Doesn’t work 100% but helps a little if I manage to forget the rest enough.

There's a ton of different tips and everyone's different. In my case no amount of list making has ever really helped because I still got easily distracted, either by external factors ("Hey, could you have a quick look at this?") or by myself ("Fiddlesticks, I completely forgot that I wanted to do x an hour ago!" repeat ad nauseum)

The meds help me to actually stay focused on a single thing instead of every distraction completely throwing me off and not getting any work done at all because I'm doing 6 things at once and constantly starting them from beginning

I do a similar hack: when I feel especially "procrastinaty" and can't seem to get into doing the thing I'm supposed to I break things that I have on my plate down to lists with sublists that often have sublists (that often have sublists, recurse).

It's not always useful, but it does eventually consume enough resources to starve the anxiety thread and some of these lists end up as the (pre)analysis for the tasks I'm supposed to be working on.

Sometimes I don't get a good list for the task I'm currently expected to solve but I make progress on some other thing that piqued my interest. This helps me justify spending the time on just making lists because not all of it is useless and lessens the anxiety about not getting anything done.

When I do get a good enough list for the thing I'm supposed to be doing I usually feel less anxiety about doing it because I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

Another hack : just pick one thing from the list and do that really well. All the rest is a bonus.

Another one : learn to say no -and this is a big one and difficult in some cases- but setting boundaries can help. Some people just never communicate that they are swamped. Ask your manager or higher up on what they consider a good days work and how it differs from your experience.

i'm in more or less exactly the same boat, only i got diagnosed officially with adhd yesterday and wont receive any medication for a few weeks. hoping it's not a misdiagnosis and life becomes a little easier.

> hoping life becomes a little easier

If I was going to be taking meds I would be hoping life becomes a LOT easier, considering the risks to disrupting the body's natural equilibrium. You should be very cautious of any drugs, especially mind-altering that must be taken frequently.

To those who come across this, ignore the ableist bullshit. ADHD medications are generally very effective. The biggest side effect is the asinine stigma they bring from people with zero understanding of ADHD or basic biochemistry.

This is very defensive. Of course they are effective, but there are very few studies on the long term effects. Common sense says that dosing your body with neurotoxic amphetamines over a long period is not good for your central nervous system. Take it everyday if you want, but don't pretend to know about the safety of long term use.

The drugs own warnings are pretty bad: https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?setid=f22...

There's very little evidence it causes any problems. Some of these medications have been in use since the 60s and most have at least 20 years of data behind them.

>neurotoxic amphetamines

That's deliberately loaded terminology. Amphetamines are neurotoxic but not at the doses used therapeutically (obviously). Everything is neurotoxic at a high enough dose.

>The drugs own warnings are pretty bad

All drugs have pretty bad warnings:

Each year, the side effects of long-term NSAID use cause nearly 103,000 hospitalizations and 16,500 deaths. More people die each year from NSAIDs-related complications than from AIDS and cervical cancer in the United States.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050111123706.h...

Would you care to post citations on side effects or dangers? Or are the doctors the ones who need to "do their research"?

A change that gets you "a little better" can very significantly impact the rest of your life, when you started at a low baseline.

People with ADHD might have benefit from working together. It’s called doubling and originally made for people with ADHD. One of them is https://www.caveday.org/.

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