Autistic and/or ADHD programmers: how does your neurotype affect you at work? | Hacker News Reader

Autistic and/or ADHD programmers: how does your neurotype affect you at work?

8 pointsAutistiCoder7 comments

Short answer, ADHD sucks, except for when it rules (about 1% of the time).

I have a very checklist oriented system now. I bootstrap each day by going through my issues and triaging them, blocking out certain portions of the day for particular pieces of work.

First block is short tasks like emails etc that take <15 minutes.

I also make a habit of noticing when I'm not starting a task because it's too complicated to immediately know what to do, in which case I have a primer task for those in which I work out what the discrete steps are and list those out.

Tasks are set into timed blocks. 15 mins for simple ones (sometimes shorter), 2 hours ish for longer ones. If they don't fit in 2 hours they're not chunked small enough.

Another tip for ADHD - if you block out 15 mins for each small task and you finish early, give yourself a little reward i.e. goofing off on HN for a couple of minutes.

Can you please elaborate your checklist system and primer task you've mentioned?

My checklist basically has me go through a workflow for bootstrapping the day.

-Start a 15 minute time

-Sweep events and tasks from three different calendars into my schedule for the day. Each task list is divided into "24-hour" "1-week" "1-month" deadline objects. Each time I read through each list, I move tasks around as neccessary within the list, and potentially mark certain items as not being chunked small enough - e.g. the first thing to do about those tasks is to decompose them into subtasks.

Then I look at the list of things I've selected for the day, and assign short tasks to the first block of the day, and then two longer blocks for focused work, using timers all the way. 15 minute timers for the short tasks, 2-hour timers for the long ones.

Items don't get deleted off the to do lists when they get transported to my daily list - they get deleted when I go through those tasks the next day and mark them done in my journal. That way I don't lose tasks that don't get done at the end of the day..

None of this matters. You need to figure out what your sticking points are each day and address those creatively. Mine were not starting tasks because I didn't know where to start exactly, and getting distracted during a task. My system still isn't perfect - I often lose track of things after lunch sometime and stop being effective. It's a battle every day, but you get to build your own weapons to fight it.

Good luck.

The biggest thing to do is to keep track of tasks so nothing is forgotten and prioritize them accordingly. Nobody likes hearing "I forgot".

Second, learn to identify when you are getting stuck in 'rabbit holes'. For some this is trying to achieve perfection, when you need to be 'good enough'. Sometimes it's endlessly researching the solution and its tangential paths, 'off on a tangent'. EDIT: Sometimes it's commenting on Hacker News......

Document and Discipline. Create a feedback loop where your Discipline fuels your Documentation to keep you organized, and the Documentation keeps your Discipline focused and prioritized on what matters.

You are absolutely correct. My company has just a single employee, me. I still document everything. I have a kanban board for things I need to do. Things that need to be done at a specific date/time get a calendar invite with a reminder. Anytime I make a decision or researrch something it goes documented in my OneNote so I can go back to look at it later to remind myself why I did something.

If it wasn't for Vyvanse I'd be fired by now.

Before I was diagnosed my average time keeping a job was something like 6 months. I would get a job, feel elated and enthusiastic about the work. After a few months I would start to struggle, feel too anxious to ask for help, spiral into depression. My work output would get worse and worse. The final nail in the coffin would be my superiors asking about my performance. I would usually quit or just disappear because I could take the shame.

Don't underestimate how bad ADHD (and related issues like anxiety, depression, rejection sensitivity) can be.

Now that I've been diagnosed I use a wide range of tools to improve my performance:

* Automation for start and end work tasks. I have Keyboard maestro open and arrange multiple windows on multiple monitors so that at the start of the work day I can press one button and get started. Or if I've gone off task I can close everything and simply hit one button to get back on task.

* Timers. I use many timers to remind me of important things and timebox chunks of work. I really like smart speakers as they are a low distraction device. I also use Horo on my computer and a garmin smartwatch with multiple vibration timers (great if you are in a situation where you need a timer but can't disturb others).

* Task separation. I use different folders and browser profiles for different tasks. The browser bar color changes to remind me which 'mode' I'm in. Downloads automatically go into their respective downloads folder so when I'm hunting for something after the fact it's usually much easier to find.

* Emotional skills. By far the biggest impact. Better than any tool, gadget, app or aphorism. Slowly learn to forgive and accept yourself even when you don't do anything. Spent the whole day watching youtube by accident? Fine. Didn't reply to that email for 6 months? It happens. Learning to see your big, uncontrollable emotions before they completely overtake you is also very valuable.

Overall ADHD is a disability and will have large effects on your career. You can take action to ameliorate some of these effects but you'll generally be behind a similar person without ADHD.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com