The underlying problem is network regulation in the brain. Your Default Mode Network (the self-referential mind-wandering system) is supposed to quiet down when you engage in tasks. In ADHD, that toggle is unreliable — the DMN keeps intruding, which is why you get that "barrage of micro ideas" breaking through during focus.

A few things that work at the root:

Meditation — not as a relaxation tool, but as direct neuroplasticity training. Focused attention practice (noticing when your mind wandered, returning to object) is literally thousands of reps training that DMN/task-positive toggle. Long-term meditators show measurably better DMN suppression during tasks.

Sleep — DMN regulation degrades hard with poor sleep. Non-negotiable foundation.

The deeper move is changing your relationship to the thoughts themselves. The DMN will always generate ideas. The shift is recognizing them as arisings rather than commands. They still come — they just lose their grip.

The reality is that there is no single thing that will help. You'll have to try shit and see what works for you. What one person swears "fixed" them might do nothing for you.

That said, the one thing that is the most likely to work out is medication. Get yourself a diagnosis, try the meds, see if it helps. Caffeine is fine, but it's no substitute for the real stuff.

Of course it won't help you just by itself, it's not the only trick you need, but please do try it.

> If someone neurotypical gives you advice, just smile and nod, and ignore it.

Neurotypicals gave me "do not sleep so much, go out in nature or do something". This advice is good for depression, not for ADHD.

> The reality is that there is no single thing that will help. You'll have to try shit and see what works for you. What one person swears "fixed" them might do nothing for you.

Yes, but you have to try different approaches. If you don't try all of them (including sleeping for a day) you won't know.

IME with the meds, the biggest benefit is not focus during its effective period, but the fact that I can still live my life properly afterwards. As in, I haven't had to spend all my day's willpower to stay on task with work, so I have more mental energy for the rest of my life.

Oh, how little I am learning to walk by myself. I would be running by now if I was unmedicated and about, the problem is that my mind is weak and I'm lazy. If only I had traded these woke mind virus pills for a stoicism book, or lifting metal, or 'detoxed', what a silly human I am. But I guess the weak and mentally strong, unlike yourself, can't do much about it but keep taking all this poison and remaining sheep. Please keep enlightening us with your knowledge and superiority.

This comment literally shows why you do not understand ADHD.

Reckon people haven’t TRIED?

And how dare you call someone lazy if they have ADHD?!?

I’m the hardest working person I know - but because of meds, I have been able to focus better. My long term planning is 0, and my executive function is low. But sure, I’ll just try a bit more.

Smh.

1) Good, regular sleep. ADHD symptoms are way more controllable when I'm well rested.

2) Stimulants: caffeine and Vyvanse. I also had a prescription for Adderall, but it has some nasty side effects for me so I rarely take it.

3) Accept that it's hard to focus on stuff that doesn't interest me, and plan accordingly. (Including career choices.)

4) Work in person, rather than remotely. I'm too tempted to screw around when I'm not around coworkers.

The first 30 minutes indeed got me very excited, but then I will fall asleep soon after.

The same thing happened to me right now with energy drink such as Redbull or Monster. Therefore I mostly drink them for some competitive activities that only last short hours

Im kinda the opposite, when im in an office, i somehow make sure no one else is getting work done

A former boss noticed this about me, years before I knew I had ADHD. It was pretty great. I tended to turn things around extremely quickly when I found them interesting. If he saw something was taking me a while or I wasn’t making progress after a couple days, he’d just give it to someone else. The net result was I got to pick my own projects, found the job much more interesting, and was significantly more productive. On the flip side of this, there were projects other people would struggle with for weeks that he’d give to me and I’d turn it around in a few hours.

These days I don’t find anything interesting and I’ve been trying to will myself to work on the same thing for 2 months (and another for 6+ months) and I can’t seem to do it. I really want to get past these things to find something new to do, but it’s been hard. The one project is massive as well. It had me looking at new career options yesterday.

But to give a real answer:

On workdays I have about 20-40 fl oz of coffee during the morning. I stop all stimulants at noon so I can sleep.

On non-workdays I have 1-3 normal sized mugs of coffee in the morning, just because I like it.

ADHD people drink coffee as a form of self medication. Caffeine is an absolutely terrible and barely working stimulant for that purpose, so we end up drinking a lot to get some effect, or at least trick ourselves.

A cup of coffee is 6oz. I drink like 6-8 a day. I do however stick to average roasts, rather than robustas or light "breakfast" roasts.

My brother has that brain worm (that I used to have) where using a medication is "bad" so instead he drinks like 5 giant energy drinks a day.

My father drinks a similar amount of coffee as I do per day, and often drinks coffee as a late night relaxation aide. Stimulants can be "calming" to some people who have a certain genetic mutation and often have ADHD

The first dose of Ritalin I took, I immediately fell asleep and took a 2 hour nap.

If you’re a slow metaboliser you end up getting a big overlap around 3hours in which can be quite unpleasant, hence the non XR compound

I had similar issues with XR methylphenidate and Dex, but concerta and vyvanse were find if I took them first thing.

I suspect a bit insignificant amount of people are slow metabolisers and are having a shit run with stimulants as a result

At least for me, Vyvanse is much more tolerable than Adderall XR.

Really basic things that other people seem good at, I struggle. Taxes, finances, anything that requires ambient awareness of systems that have no clear feedback loops. Sometimes penalties for trivial things accumulate and it costs a lot of money. Goals, unless they're something like literally climbing a mountain, don't really motivate me. I don't have any financial or life goals at all, they seem artificial and silly.

Without stimulants, and a thankfully somewhat lenient company/client atm, I'd be screwed.

The positive is that I seem to be much better at making friends than most other people I know, and enjoy a variety of interesting hobbies. I'm also not that fearful or anxious about trying new things.

In terms of who I listen to about the topic, it's certainly not any entrepreneur types, it's mostly friends. Though Trevor Noah has a great podcast on the topic last April

https://pca.st/episode/19d903d2-bb2b-4213-837e-89a1af706ea0

Additionally, I cope by exclusion. I don't obligate myself to many things or events, and refuse to participate in group chats. I keep almost no notifications on, and people know that if they need my attention, they can just call me, otherwise I won't respond until I get around to it. I only buy gifts when I find inspiration to, and try not to spread myself too thin.

I also try to avoid easy things as much as possible. I failed at easy assignments, easy exams in school, why bother going through the rote motions for no other purpose than to be measured on my performance in doing them?

Especially the "easy things" bit. What an absolute waste of my time and focus to waste on trivial things that will just be measured against some standard, stale rubric.

Busy work for myself and the person receiving it.

But then, I tend to blow the scope of things I have to do in order to make it seem more important. And that means I extend "deadlines" or take longer to complete things. Oh well.

Part of accepting my ADHD is accepting that there is some truth to the feelings, that is, the notion of deadlines and urgency is usually so phony and unnecessary. My brain, my soul knows that something due at 5pm can absolutely be turned in the next day at 8am and nothing in the world will change.

Yep I do this too, in ways that would be absolutely comical to a normal person.

> Part of accepting my ADHD is accepting that there is some truth to the feelings, that is, the notion of deadlines and urgency is usually so phony and unnecessary. My brain, my soul knows that something due at 5pm can absolutely be turned in the next day at 8am and nothing in the world will change.

Yes, although it's helpful in some situations, most modern everyday systems have no intrinsically urgent or important timelines or consequences. The effect is hard to relate to anyone who panics for exams. There's been moments where my brain just knows the test I'm taking has no bearing on my future, and I'll just space out because it provokes no useful stress response.

People don't appreciate how much of their ability to be successful at work comes down to innate anxiety about what usually amounts to bullshit.

Dr. Russell Barkley's youtube videos and book and the How To ADHD youtube channel are other resource I like and refer to, because they've surfaced useful information and perspective to me. How To ADHD is especially nice to share with friends / family / dear ones who happen to be in one's (erratic, surprising, incredibly fun, incredibly annoying, seemingly lawless) orbit.

[0] It irks me how many people say "strategies for ... xyz" when they're talking about procedures, or tactics, or personal hacks.

(edit: fix formatting, typo)

Instead of having a million different tabs open, use a tab session manager, save the stuff you want to read later, and keep open only stuff pertinent to things you are working on.

Prioritize your projects to have actionable goals.

When you procrastinate, try to do so by being productive on smaller projects.

Be aware of your own nature, and try to exert control over it. Recognize that not every idea or desire is useful, and learn to discard the ones that are not and investigate or give more attention to the ones that are.

Organization, take notes and organize them. I often have a scratchpad textfile open, that I then organize into sections (e.g. app ideas, ideas for specific code projects, movie ideas, whatever), break these up further into project or topic files. The ones that grow and get fleshed out are the ones worth pursuing.

Have a healthy sleep and recreation routine to not get burned out.

Leaning a little into the the distractions, and building processes to quickly search and hop between things had made it better for me.

At the very least opening tabs with Ctrl+T, tab search with Ctrl+Shift+A, quickly closing them with Ctrl+W is my main workflow in Chrome-based browsers.

Once I get my speed up, I find distractions don't occur as often.

Emacs, org-mode, magit, and AI, combined with good sleep, weight lifting, stimulants, have almost completey nullified my ADHD problems.

It's been a hard slog to get here though.

You're dying.

Why cling to false narratives of "efficiency" and "output".

Be human. Be not bot.

I care about efficiency and output because I care about being able to be productive and not just letting my thoughts take me constantly astray.

Nothing to do with being a bot.

When I break it up, I personally use latex files. I know everyone loves markdown, but I'm not a fan of Obsidian (closed source and electron, ugh), so I fell in love with TexStudio.

I have keybindings for simple macros to insert sections and subsections that I can quickly name, and these display in the navigation tree very well. TexStudio also allows multiple tex files open at once with a tabbedinterface, and allows saving sessions, so I can open one file to open all my, say, 'ai app ideas' notes. I've found this to work better for myself than any other available app or solution.

Eventually, I'd like to release a fork which would mainly be trimming stuff out rather than really adding anything in, but it's far from a priority for me at the moment.

I need two things: ubiquity, so that I can add ideas, todos, etc. wherever I am; and exaggerated simplicity so that I don't end up turning the note solution into its own project that's abandoned or exchanged in a year.

GDocs/a wiki have actually worked well, though I don't do the re-reading. Just crapping it out into a known place works pretty well.

I got diagnosed at 29. Up until then I was very entrepreneurial and ambitious, constantly working on business ideas. Hell I taught myself software engineering because I had a single idea I hyper focused on lol.

The way I see it, lean into it. ADHD is a double edged sword - you get intrusive thoughts, some of them are bad, but some of them are ideas.

You can’t really change your brain, you can take medication and it might help you focus a bit more.

But I say lean into it. I’ve had several successful ventures from pure ADHD fuelled idea binges.

I don’t really switch off, but I make sure I work in the office every day because being around people helps.

But when I’m alone it’s a barrage of thoughts, some days more intense than others.

There are alot of ADHD founders and programmers

We really need novelty so you’ll excel in environments that can offer that (travel, anything fast paced, transport roles like trucking etc)

Embrace the chaos, don’t fight it

We used to need people that were aware of their surroundings and able to create novel solutions to environmental challenges.

I leverage that as much as I can. Sometimes that means my "breaks" are actually rollerblading in the park while listening to music and weaving (very politely) between people.

Sometimes that means I workout and pretend I'm hunting or traversing some sort of chasm/river/etc.

It helps reduce the "death stench" that routine, monotonous work seems to give off.

Now want a quick fix? If you can, get medication. It doesn't work for all people with ADHD but for those that it does it will give you the most bang for the buck.

Now there is coping strategies. Therapists can help a lot. There is also people offering ADHD coaching. This is great because the coaches tend to have ADHD themselves and understand you. It helped me personally a lot but be warned that everyone can offer coaching so quality may wary.

Last part is lifestyle. Sport. It is not optional. Running is amazing and will help you a lot but if you are not fit enough yet, walk. Walk every day for at least 30min. You need to. Also personally for me reading a physical book for at least 30min a day makes a huge, huge difference. Diet is important but what works varies from ADHD person to person. For me cutting out processed sugar was a good step.

Also no caffeine. This may also vary but completely cutting it helped me personally a lot. Yes, it helps somewhat with executive function but only in the short term and does more harm than good in the long term. Generally any form form of self medication be it alcohol, weed and so on, cut it out. Again get proper medication if you can.

Honestly accepting that you have ADHD or well at least some form of neurodivergency is already the biggest step. It gets so much easier once you learn how to properly manage it.

Came across this a few months ago on HN here and there’s a fair bit of exposition on things you’ve mentioned. My personal takeaway from it was to try Todoist, which has been a complete game changer in my life. I’ve used other systems before but something about Todoist worked better for my brain (plus the mobile integration is awesome… my second best over the years was org-mode but the mobile story is way too clunky)

I was diagnosed with ADHD a year and a half ago in my ~mid 30s. The meds (Vyvanse) help somewhat, but the real key to improvement for me has been using Todoist.

IME the real trick is using it consistently, and for everything. My routines (e.g. morning routine: meds, eat, coffee, brush teeth, brush the dog's teeth, etc etc) are all in Todoist, not because I struggle to focus on getting that stuff done in the morning (well, sometimes, perhaps) but because starting the day with do-easy-thing, mark-it-done, repeat, sets up the rest of the day to be run by Todoist instead of the bit of my brain that goes "I know we should be getting ready to leave but WHAT IF YOU WROTE AN APP TO DO THIS COOL THING, JUST QUICKLY TRY THAT NOW, YOU CAN LEAVE AFTER".

I had a similar experience with org-mode too. It was great at work where I'm at my desk all day, and made a huge difference, but not having a good mobile experience makes it impractical for day-to-day home use.

I did use org-mode like that too (all of life into it, not just work) when I was working from home but both capture and viewing when away from the laptop just had too much friction.

The Amen Clinics use PET scans of the brain to differentiate between seven types of ADD: https://www.amenclinics.com/conditions/adhd-add/ You may find these write-ups helpful in refining your understanding. Dr. Amen has a book that I found helpful https://www.amazon.com/Healing-ADD-Revised-Breakthrough-Prog...

I don't take stimulants beyond caffeine, I meditate most days at least once a day, which I find helpful, as well as not stay up too late. I keep a pad of paper by my bed to capture ideas. Working to music seems to help.

If you get a lot of ideas, you should reconcile yourself to only acting on a small fraction of them and worry less about all of the possibilities.

I try to take care to keep the commitments that I make, writing them down and tracking them. And here it is important to keep a close track.

I may be less impaired than you are, although many people have noticed I seem to get a lot of ideas. I collaborated with a partner on a book once, and at one point, about halfway through, he was frustrated with me and said, "You are a geyser of ideas. We don't need more ideas, we need to complete what we set out to do."

I learned of a name to how I have been at 32 years of age, and got formally diagnosed at 39. The trigger was my 6 year old acting like I did when I was 6 and seeing how much of a struggle it is for him and others around him.

Been titrating medication and reworking how I approach my work and personal life the last few months.

The thing about constant stream of ideas, micro ideas, while life pulls in different directions- kids, partner, social life, home needs etc is the struggle I am working on to manage better.

It sounds like we could share notes. Would you be interested to communicate over a private message? I’m based in the Netherlands.

P.s. I’ve got nothing to sell, influence or creep about. Genuinely someone on the same boat and I thought it would be nice to communicate with someone who can relate.

If you’d prefer - my email is aravindh at fastmail com

Taking a few steps forward on something help me get over the initial paralysis. Get people to help you need priorities. I constantly check in with bosses to ensure I’m doing the most important thing.

Interesting about sleep, I definitely feel most productive in the morning after a solid night of sleep.

It has its downsides but a constant comment/compliment I get from friends how much I get done with my limited time. I have to always be doing something that consumes my attention or I’ll go nuts. I can’t watch sports for example because all the constant stops and starts make me lose my attention and go somewhere else.

1. Sleep well: have stable schedule & sleep enough

2. Meditate: practice to control your focus and withstand distractions

3. Move: run, lift-weights, bike, swim, just keep moving regularly

4. Avoid cheap dopamine: stop anything that gives you short, easy bursts of dopamine (such as doom-scrolling, binge watching, online-gaming, etc)

5. Write: keep notes, lists, events, to externalize your thoughts and keep track of things

- Write down thoughts that pop-up and seem potentially useful, and then forget about them. It's easier said than done, but you have to balance "this may seem useful later" with "I got better things to do now". For me, knowing I have the idea recorded somewhere puts my mind at ease.

- Feel free to just get rid of accumulated browser tabs, random to-do's or even mental notes. If you always have multiple things open, do a hard reset every now and then. It's difficult to let go at first, but you may realize that if an idea was really worth entertaining, it will come back to you. No great contribution is the result of one single thought, IMO.

Note: I lean closer to scattered attention than AD(H)D, because it doesn't affect my normal functioning. Sure, it gets progressively more annoying when deadlines are looming, but it also provides a great source of creativity.

For me caffeine makes it a lot worse, I'm pretty sensitive, on a lot of days I can't even drink a cup of coffee or it'll affect me. I also get a lot worse if I am letting a lot of tasks build up and I bounce around between them.

Ultimately what worked for me was developing the ability to not react to something crossing my mind. Like in your example right when the micro idea would cross my mind after going deep, I'd just let that micro thought have a few seconds to pass through my mind, and not react to it. I wouldn't give into the thought "I need to start doing this micro project!" or have any kind of reaction. Once the immediate reaction passed I would decide whether it's worth changing my focus.

This can also be used in the inverse, if I decide to go deep on something, periodically checking in to see if it's still worth going vs asking for help/input.

Meds - the baseline, the scaffolding.

Sleep - up there or higher than meds maybe. Seriously, if you want to throw money at something, do it here.

Meditation - it trains your focus, gotta be the "shamatha" kind, i.e focusing on a single point of your body, say the tip of your nose as you breathe, and upon losing focus and thinking of something else returning to that anchor point.

App blocker - really important. No distractions/limit short form content

Diet - also really important, low carbs, healthy diet. Lots of fiber. Minimize glucose spikes.

Sunlight

Exercise - aids sleep, boosts cognition

I believe these to be the main ones. The thing is that it all loops back to impulsivity (your brain constantly churning ideas and following them), which realistically, in my experience, is mostly affected by meds, sleep, exercise (as you do it), and maybe over the long run, via meditation. I do believe the first two are the basis to everything.

The thought of that kind of scares me---I'm in my late 20s and tend to think I have functioned my whole life without needing any kind of coping strategy or technique to keep myself on top of my work, but now I am facing the possibility that I might just have to start doing things differently, and I'm not sure where to start.

Aside from actually getting diagnosed, are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?

How do you tend to spend your time?

What percentage of your time is spent on activities that benefit from rapid context-switching and short periods of concentration? (Examples might include watching short-form content, browsing/commenting on online forums, most video games, navigating most cities, and working in certain environments).

How much time do you spend on activities that benefit from the opposite? Sustained concentration and attention with minimal interruptions. (Examples might include watching movies, reading novels, some video games, navigating countryside, and working in certain environments).

Our bodies and minds adapt to the demands we place on them. If you're sedentary all day you'll lose muscle mass, cardio endurance, etc.

Late 20s/early 30s is when I started to notice the costs associated with my lifestyle becoming more apparent. The prophylactic effects of youth start to wear off and you realise that you are what you eat, in a multitude of ways.

Externalizing my brain helped massively before I was diagnosed. Pages and pages of notes -- both to write an idea down to move away from it and as a way to make sure I do a task. It's way easier for me to accomplish something if I can obsessively plan it out in advance, and it's way easier to stop rolling an idea around in my head if I jot it down (potentially to be never entertained again.)

It's a later step after diagnosis, but my doctor told me I'd be surprised at how effective medication can be. They were 100% right. It's not a cure all and it's not without potential side effects, but it makes me sad that it took me so long to approach my primary doctor about the issues.

But as a side note, the medical info I've read makes a pretty firm statement that there is no late developing ADHD. One if the diagnostic criteria is that the symptoms occurred during childhood. Coping and your environment may affect the disorder's effect on your life, but it's with you for your life. _However_, adult diagnosis is very real. Your environment changes so much as you age, and it may or may not make ADHD worse. I'd talk to your primary doctor with an open mind, both for what may be going on and for how to deal with it.

Carefully consider your environment. I perform best with very little going on around me. In my physical environment and on my PC. Austere. Minimize things that catch your brain and eye. One or two apps at a time, close everything else. Pick your one more important thing every day and work on that. It needs to be a contract. Usually you have one or two important things to be doing and you can ignore everything else without too much consequence.

To remember things you need an ironclad todo system that lets you very quickly capture anything you need to remember. You need to be able to record, triage, filter, prioritize, and execute on anything you need to remember. If any one of those stages is leaky you won't trust it and it won't last. My entire life is structured around managing it. I have to have very strong discipline. House must be spotless. Desk must be spotless. Try to work in the same place at the same time every day. Environmental and contextual stability is huge. Your brain must associate a particular desk, chair, place with doing the most important things. If you allow yourself to goof off or do other things in that place you are losing the fight.

Working out fixes a lot for me too. I workout or my mood and motivation falls apart. Move or die. Again, consistency is key. Everything I do around environment is to reduce the need to use executive function. It is finite and fickle for people with ADHD. The more you have to think and convince yourself to do things the less likely you are to do them. You need consistent cues. "Sit down here, start timer, means work on main thing and nothing else." If you can have discipline at all of these external things, the work can just happen and there is a kind of freedom in that.

Program outlets. Give yourself set, specific time to explore the sidetracking. Don't tell your brain no. Tell it "later". It helps if you know there is time for the extra thoughts. That there is a relief valve.

Also, drugs. I use prescribed stimulants. There are some unpleasant negative things, but I can function with them and life is better with them. But it isn't some magical cure. You still have to be organized and willing to work on your tasks or you will just be really focused on things you don't really need to be doing.

I could write so much more, but that is some top of mind stuff that I think sits at the top of my hierarchy of being productive. Oh and you may need to have some conversations with future you. How is future you, a week, month, year from now going to feel if you burned a lot of time on side quests?

What helped was accepting that most ideas aren't actually that good - they just feel urgent in the moment. Now I use a deliberate friction test: if I still remember the idea after an hour without writing it down, maybe it's worth capturing. The truly important stuff has a way of recurring.

For the stuff that IS worth keeping, voice memos work better than typing for me. Lower friction means I actually do it, and listening back forces me to process rather than just hoard.

What seems to work for me:

* meds

* writing everything down. This is not ADHD specific advice, I got it from GTD and it decreased anxiety. Just get used to the feeling that you will pull it out when you need it. I keep looking around for better solutions, but I no longer expect to have one that is perfect. Currently peeking back into Obsidian, for how flexible it is, but not abandoning OmniFocus and other tools I use.

* I prioritize regular sleep, but I allow myself digging deep in a subject that interests me from time to time

* physical work is surprisingly relaxing

* AI is becoming very important to me in completing tasks which are complex enough for me to get bored/tired/overwhelmed before reaching the finish line. A micro idea is great if you can tell Claude to implement it and come back to you. Even better when it succeeds :) The shorter time from starting to reward of completing is great for delivering.

* schedule some time for learning new stuff, otherwise you will become tired that it's all work and no fun

* delegate taking into account where you struggle the most. You might feel bad since you are delegating the most difficult work, but it might actually by trivial to people with brains with no such issues.

* not everything needs to be done, prioritize and don't worry about the less important stuff your brain throws at you

* it's more about setting time blocks to focus on something than reaching a specific goal. An hour scheduled in the calendar for support emails, for development, for reading...

* cheer up, we're entering the best period so far for people having ideas and you will have plenty

* [BONUS EDIT] noise-cancelling headphones :)

Everyone is different, but I think for ADHD people we can't be still to recuperate. I'm giving knitting a try, it's a pretty meditative activity, with a low cognitive load. My husband plays video games.

Getting out in nature is good. Walking, biking. I bought a onewheel just for the novelty of floating around the neighborhood.

then think about talking to a medical professional, and a therapist, and coming up with your own coping strategies.

> How do you manage the constant stream of thoughts and ideas?

take notes of ideas and come back to them later when you have time.

I also am one of the few people who can walk and read at the same time, either from an ereader, phone or a book (as long as the size is manageable). I read and comprehend better when I am walking. It's crazy, but I'm a klutz when I'm not reading. When I'm walking I pay far better attention to the road as well.

That's exactly what I've been having for the last 20 years. If something motivates you, you do it non-stop, until you are bored, switch to the next thing...it happens around 2 to 3 days during the "hype" period, then you suddenly got off to new things.

That's why I have hundreds of POCs and toy projects at hand, but only a few of them materialized.

That's how I ended up with 85 subfolders in my `Projects`, most of them are empty or have a lone README.md. :'(

I wrote about it briefly here: https://0xff.nu/adhd-productivity-fundamentals/

I honestly wish I could see the world, at least for one day, how neurotypical people see it.

That, and learn what adhd actually does, stuff like issues prioritizing tasks, sudden impulsive thoughts, “the adhd wall”, RSD, weak inner voice, etc. It’s much easier to handle if you understand it and can differentiate between something like an impulse and regular thoughts.

I recommend watching videos from Dr Berkeley on YouTube on how to manage adhd. There are lots of tricks like making things physical (time, tasks), or using with external consequences to combat weak inner voice

Review what you’ve written down fairly frequently (weekly or so). You won’t have enough capacity to act on all or even most of it. Extract the most important items.

Put the rest in a “someday/maybe” list that you review rarely (quarterly or annually) to keep your brain satisfied that they’re not lost permanently. When reviewing this list you can remove anything that no longer interests you.

If you have thoughts in your mind you can't put away, write it all down on pen and paper (draw if possible). Take only 5 minutes. Then tell yourself you will come back to it at a better time. Once in a while sort the ideas and schedule when to think about them if they are worth exploring. It's key to order them as it makes you feel in control.

Weed does help sometimes, though I would not say the stream is turned off, but a lot of things go in the background, if that makes sense.

It’s cliche but I would recommend to see a psychiatrist for diagnosis and a therapist

It had to be a good mix of THC and CBD and other terpines for the entourage effect.

I realized also that ingesting it as controlled oil drops was best. As I could get the same, consistent level.

For me, it just relaxed me enough that, though the engine was still running , I didn't feel like I HAD to redline it all the time. I could just chill and mellow out. And that it's okay to chill and mellow out sometimes.

If you think you have ADHD, try getting evaluated by a clinician. It’s not hard to do. A good clinician can go over the range of behavioral and medication options and assess for comirbidities like autism.

I often work on several projects at the same time, and that sort of "keeps everything interesting"; I also have some personal projects, that may or may not get attention depending on my enthusiasm. I often take notes on things/thoughts/ideas, but they work mostly as a mnemonic to help me recall details.

> Oh and how do you switch off?

That's the trick :) I dont.

2. If you're diagnosed, start medication and see if it works for you - it's by far the intervention with most evidence behind it for alleviating ADHD symptoms. It's not for everyone but for many of the people it helps starting medication is an absolutely life changing decision in the best possible way.

The key for any us may be to just find people we can work with who have different attributes, resulting in balanced partnership.

I have at least some anecdotal evidence to support pairings of compatible and complementary ADHD and HFAS minds.

Character is probably the most important single element, however.

2) Atomoxetine works for me. For managing thoughts, I recommend to just write markdown text every day by create new file every month like "diary.2026.01.md". Then you can track daily tasks and medium/long term goals. I get easily distracted when using TODO apps.

3) Sleep.

> I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure.

I take your hedging to mean you are probably self diagnosing. It's worth talking to a doctor and getting the ball rolling on a formal diagnosis. ADHD is not the only diagnosis with those symptoms. For instance bipolar and autism spectrum disorder. Again, not a doctor, take that with a grain of salt.

There are probably new tactics you can adopt in this thread, and they may help and are worth trying. Advice which is actionable today is valuable. But if this is severe enough to disrupt your life, the best strategy is a combination of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes (eg exercise).

Easier said than done, I know. I have my own issues I'm struggling with and I get it. I'm in the midst of trying that same three pronged approach.

Please also understand that these diagnosis do not all have the same consequences for not treating them. If you don't want to pursue formal diagnosis and treatment, that is your right, but I would urge you to investigate whether or not you are bipolar in any case. If you have your first manic episode, and you don't understand that is what is happening, it could be dangerous. What you're describing sounds more like ADHD to me personally but is not inconsistent with hypomania either. Again, not a doctor, grain of salt.

/r/flying is full of people who wish they didn't have this in their medical record. The FAA is totally backwards about medical stuff and has a very dim view towards ADHD & associated meds.

OCS wouldn't return my calls, but I think that was more due to my GPA than my prescription for Ritalin.

If one did want to become a pilot, I do think it would be critical to determine whether or not they were prone to manic episodes. That really could be very dangerous to a pilot and their crew, passengers, etc.

Also, from my 15 minutes of preliminary research, I don't think that applies to pilots of ultralights. So if your dream is simply to fly, it's still achievable.

For work purposes I keep hand written To Do lists that I re-write every week or so

This is in addition to the teams Jira tickets and Scrum etc

There is no "switching off" your just f-ed

You might be right, but until you get a professional diagnosis you can't really be sure. Hacker-news will disagree but it is impossible to be objective about your own mental health. The good news is that if you do have adult ADHD, it is treatable (much more so than other conditions like depression).

Some people might try to spin it as something cool, but that last "d" stands for disorder. It's a disorder and NOT a "founder thing", regardless of what Paul Graham thinks. ADHD can do enormous damage to your life, relationships, and professional development.

Meditation helps Sleep as well

The diagnosis/medication route isn’t for everyone but, in my case, it is a thousand times better than trying any systems/strategies unmedicated.

Medication alone isn’t a magical cure but it gets me to the point where various systems/strategies do start to work.

Also whilst medicated I don’t get as distracted anywhere near as easily. If I do think of something else I can write it down and go back to what I was working on.

Whilst medicated I don’t try and keep track of 4 different conversations going on around me whilst not giving enough attention to the actual person I’m supposed to be listening to and talking to.

Whilst medicated I don’t just endlessly write, rewrite or reorder TODO lists, I can actually start (and finish!) items on that list. This means I’m not just motivated by stress/deadlines, I can get things done way ahead of the last minute.

An ADHD diagnosis and medication has been utterly transformational in my life.

I tried a whole host of stuff in the years before I finally went for an official diagnosis. In hindsight I wish I’d spoken to my doctor years earlier but, guess what, people with ADHD procrastinate.

Lastly, I now no longer have to expend huge amounts of energy masking my ADHD symptoms. Prior to diagnosis I didn’t realise just how much of a toll this was taking on me and I just attributed it to 25 years of working in the IT industry and possible burnout.

After reading a book about APD, I felt like I was reading reports written about my life. I told my late wife’s best friend and she was like “she knew the whole time, you drove her crazy sometimes”. I was blissfully ignorant.

I drink a lot of coffee as a baseline and have since high school. I’m afraid of stimulant drugs and won’t pursue them.

The one thing that I love that truly changed my life for the better is running. I started at 45 after a series of really awful events. I’ve never felt such a clarity of mind and feeling.

I wish I had known about it in my teens. I went through alot of shitty times without understanding why. Life moved on, but I wasted alot of opportunity and missed some things that I regret a bit.

Run (or bike or whatever gets you) and get to know yourself. Know what you want, and when you embark on a side quest, stop and see if you are going where you want to be.

a.) Ideas not meaningfully capitalized on are no more useful than delusions. Force yourself to focus with tools.

b.) Don't worry about it; you should be able to think and imagine freely in and about the environment the world has presented you with. When you have The One Right Idea™, you'll know, and it'll be like it's putting itself together in front of you. Allow yourself kindness, understanding, and leniency; only then will your output be pure. Or something.

Maybe it's good to have some of both of these. Maybe I should plan for them in advance.

This isnt adhd. It's an awful lot like adhd but isnt unique or something that would be a diagnosis.

At most you're diagnosing high curiosity and obviously openness. Just a personality type. Common of people who were exposed to the internet since childhood. You're probably dating yourself as a millennial; late 30s?

>I think there is a founder/ADHD thing. Paul Graham thinks so. Maybe even a tech person angle. What have other people experienced?

On either side of this personality traits. You have the thinkers who make connections and invent new things. So they are great at startups and entrepreneurship. But the moment the business gets beyond this step. They fall away.

The opposite personality is one who doesnt make new connections or invents new things, but knows how to execute and follow through.

Ive seen it happen in tech and politics many times now. It's something Elon musk learnt in university. You have to give up your baby to be raised by someone who can raise it right.

>And how do others cope? I don't really know this world. I do know that my old boss once called me a "flagitating laser beam". I think he meant distracted. I use a bunch of systems to cope. For a long time lists, and then Asana. Asana ruled my life. I just built my own thing to capture tasks, projects, but also knowlegde. Not sure if it will help we will see.

a couple paragraphs on the internet will never get you a diagnosis of adhd... but there are tests online that might guide. I was a huge trello fan until atlassian ruined it. Ive been thinking of coding a trello-like into my home django project.

>- Who else feels this way? - How do you manage? - Oh and how do you switch off? That is hard

Why switch it off? There is training of course; you need to learn when to listen to your guardian angel. mindful meditation will help. Go buy a muse EEG. Do get the sleep one even though its more expensive.

But no 'switch off' it's about keeping it, but being able to tell your brain not now.

What you need is an assistant or partner. Luckily for you, if you cant afford someone, you can use AI.

GTD helps address that disconnect. The thought pops up, I dump it in the inbox. It is now "dealt with", asynchronously, and the thought can stop bouncing around my head. If it pops up again, I remember that I wrote it down, and let it go. Sometimes I'm not sure, so I just write it down again, no biggie if it gets duplicated.

And it also serves as a filter. So many of my ideas are just silly flights of fancy that, when I'm confronted with them even the next day, I already hate them, and just discard them.

It took me months to get used to it, and get consistent with even remembering to write stuff down. But you get better at it, and eventually you'll have less random thoughts bouncing around your head all the time. It's actually helped me be less stressed and calmed me down a bunch.

It's important to note that the system is ever evolving. It wraps in on itself. As I use the system, ideas and frustrations about the system pops up. I write them down as well, and if actionable, do something about them. So for instance, my list of "asap" tasks was getting cluttered with: groceries I need to buy, various changes to my emacs/wm/OS configuration, things that needed to get done, but were not really urgent, like "clean the shower". Obviously cleaning the shower is a good idea, but it's not like the world will end if I don't do it right this minute. This resulted in me always having more of these single tasks that I could typically finish in a day, which was distracting, because there were all these items on my agenda pulling my mind in different directions. So I herded these things into places where they make more sense. Made a shopping list and a wishlist. The shopping list gets synced to my phone and I have a widget for it via the orgzly app(which I also use as my mobile inbox). These things are not on my agenda, because whenever I'm looking at my agenda I'm not in a position to buy milk. "Config stuff" is now its own list, and I have a weekly habit item where I spend a couple hours on stuff in that list. I don't touch it otherwise and it doesn't clog up my agenda. More tedious, less urgent chores have their own list as well, and I similarly try to spend at least an hour a week on those.

Now, the block of my agenda with these "single tasks" will rarely be more than 5 tasks, most of them taking less than 10 minutes. I can easily clear it almost every day. And if I have a bad day and do nothing, the list is still manageable the next day. And ofc I made a daily habit item to that effect. That contributes to a sense of mastery, and I also get to work on the "fun stuff" without being plagued by guilt about all the other tasks I'm neglecting. Fuck yes.

Now I'm noticing another issue, that I'm getting an increasing list of these multistep projects. And I'm currently working on making a weekly review process where i prioritise projects. Ideally, I want a list of active projects with an explicit goal that I should check off at least one subtask in every active project in a week. And a procedure to manage which projects are active, not active, etc. that way I can keep my agenda free of projects that I've fallen out of love with that just sit in my agenda making me guilty.

Of course, the GTD book goes into all of this in detail. But I don't have the book. I prefer to develop this system myself, incrementally. One major issue I've had in the past with these systems is a sort of "system overwhelm", where the ADHD tendency to take things too far leads me to "commit" to adopting some ambitious, complicated system virtually overnight, and it's good for a couple days. Then I have a bad day, fail to follow it, and the ADHD propensity to see myself as a failure takes over, leading me to discard the system because I think I'm just not capable of following it. No more. Start with something dead simple, that you can do even on your shittiest days. Write some stuff down, go through it the next day. Just do that one thing. If after processing the inbox, all you can manage is to fuck off and play video games all day, fine. It's ok to have bad days. I certainly still have them. But even people with ADHD can develop habits. We're just bad at the initial phase ehere the habit isn't automatic yet. So make it at simole as possible at first, and then build on it slowly over time is my main advice.