Ideally, I’d have unmedicated days where I just sit and think through problems, and then medicated days where I’d work on the actual implementation. Unfortunately, I just spend all of my time on HN and youtube on my unmedicated days.
I often wonder about this with me. I've got various hallmarks of ADHD (especially after my SO was diagnosed), but generally i'm productive.
In this specific case, i can't figure out if it's something like ADHD that drives this behavior _or_ just normal human avoidance of work i dislike.
Ie i of course don't have this problem when it's an interesting problem. I also tend not to have this problem after i get started, since most larger domains have interesting subdomains. Difficulty (read: vagueness, scope issues, etc) definitely lead to more of this for me though.
Human brains are weird.
Stimulants basically help regulate the dopamine levels so you can context switch easier and spread your attention to more things.
Imagine a top of the line TV. Fantastic image quality. The only catch is... you can't choose what content it's playing.
That's ADHD. At least for some people. Like me.
The first times I tried stimulants, after 2-3 hours of euphoric productivity, the effects would wear off but the residual stimulation would be enough to make me continue working and I would always think "hey, I can do this no problem without the stimulants, I just need to push over the hump", but never seemed to work.
A few years in, and yes, I can do without stimulants on easy tasks, but not really on complex stuff.
I also can drive wile not on stimulants and not be a complete nervous mess afterwards, which is a big permanent gain for me.
Also the "OMG, OMG, I'm so screwed by this messup at work, they're going to find me, things are going to crash because of it" changed to "it's going to be ok, things always work out in the end"
but i also work out 5-6 days a week and that + meds have been a huge boon than just meds because it keeps the depression down too, which is what you might be afflicted with because on my rare off days i still can do some work & be motivated