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Comment by bcheung | Hacker News Reader

I've seen DISC and Kolbe used at companies I have been at. I've learned that I have a low tolerance for structure and work best on large projects with lots of unknowns and autonomy. Explains why I've always preferred startups over larger companies. Seems like few companies can accommodate ADHD people. It's a shame because once I'm focused and interested in a project I do incredible work. But the daily standup, pick something off the queue, weekly sprints don't seem to be the environment I thrive under. Ask me to build a big system or service and I can come back in a month and deliver something incredible.

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Can relate to the ADHD bit and ditto on environments that are best for personal productivity. I started at a big bank, moved to a VC fund, then an early stage startup and now work as an independent consultant for a non profit now. With each move, as autonomy increased and incentives were more aligned, I found myself producing a lot more. A large part of it is that I was able to also find work that was interesting but I think the bigger factor was autonomy, alignment of incentives and whether I was judged on metrics that correspond to my strengths. It's not even like i have an inifnitely high risk appetite but for personality reasons, I've resigned myself to the fact that if i want to succeed, I have to pursue almost complete autonomy and thus expose myself to broader variance.

My hot take is that at some level, ADHD is indistinguishable from low conscientiousness - forgetting appointments, meetings, calls etc. More precisely, ADHD seems negatively correlated with the orderliness facet of conscientiousness but orthogonal to industriousness. If you're high on industriousness and low on orderliness, you sort of have no choice but to be your own boss.

Yes, ADHD definitely seems to correlate with high openness and low conscientiousness. I've also found most self-help and productivity advice to be useless.

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