The lighter side of ADHD
Found this applies nicely to my career. Routineish work? Drag my feet and fight myself to do anything. Fixing problems (bigger the better)? Everybody stand back, I got it.
Whole damn system failed due to a database failure that propagated to our secondary host too. Hacked our backup to usable in a day (meeting most requirements, including transition requirements) with a path forward for total system recovery on the main system.
Documentation on any of that though, that was a .. struggle.
That resonates so well with me. Attending all the meetings, discussing feature requests and evaluating their feasibility is so exhausting. But working overtime for a few days to find and fix the bug that completly halted production? No problem!
ADHD brain is built for sprints, not marathons
The problem is that management picked up on that and now everything is a "sprint." A never-ending marathon of sprints.
Same here. Daily business I have to push me to get through the work. Major outage and everyone runs around like headless chicken? I'm the one keeping it cool and organising that everything comes back.
If the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Sounds like someone read that Discordian quotes page in the early days of the internet
Reminds me of a time, maybe 15 years ago, a young teen fainted in the middle of the queue in the supermarket. Everyone was stunned by the bystander effect, and as soon as I checked on him, everyone else sprang into action. It's odd seeing it in action. Anyway, I could slink out real quick after that.
Unfortunately, ADHD being a spectrum, not all of us get blessed with the crisis focus superpower.
I’m only worth anything in a crisis.
It’s why my last relationship worked for so long. Girl was a living crisis.
Ohhhhhh, that explains a number of past relationships for me.
Lmao same here buddy.
I only date crazy (cluster B especially) women. It‘s always exciting, never boring, and I feel useful when I support them in whatever crisis situation they created. Somehow I confuse being wanted as support with love.
I tried dating more balanced people, who have their lives under control. Couldn’t do it. It’s simply too boring.
I really miss my unstable ex, even though the relationship ended with a broken heart, being broke as in too much credit card debt, a broken door in my apartment, and broken friendships with my old friends. I would do it all again though. The happiest days of my life were together with that extremely charming and sexy histrionic goddess.
Limerance is my favorite drug.
The woman I’ve been with for the last decade is an emotional woman, but she’s smart, capable, and stable.
The one I spent my late teens through 32, man oh man. It was always something with her. I’d be at work thinking everything was ok, get home and find she had left. I mean, she dealt with a lot of shit out of me, but damn.
Our last big breakup took 3 years. We were a signature away from closing on a loan for a home. She left me over and over again. Cheated with more people than I even know about. Didn’t want me at all until I found someone else and then all hell broke loose.
To give you an example of how much cheating went on at the end (maybe throughout, I never spied on her). 2 years after we had split for good an old mutual friend approached me at a gas station and apologized to me haha. I didn’t even know anything had happened between them.
Poor girl died from breast cancer 4 years after we split.
Life is chaos. It really is.
I’ve got it. I turn into a damn super hero.
Can unfortunately confirm. Am useless in and our of a crisis. I can have all the steps for what to do laid out in my head, but be inexplicably incapable of doing anything with them.
Turns out we have different neuro types because we need people who are good at dealing with different circumstances. Who knew ?
People knew. Then everything started being "i need people to work in my factory/office doing the same thing again and again" and everyone had to be the same.
Edit: Think of all the advancement in science from people that were not "normal", now they'd have just failed basic school and never had any chances to do academia. I think Einstein failed history and other subjects in a college entrance but excelled in physics and math.
Marx wrote a lot about this as a criticism of capitalism. Specifically in how he defines alienation and product fetishism (seeing the economy as a relationship between products and not between people).
The "capitalism is human nature" is complete horse shit, because even if that was true, less than one percent of the population have enough capital to actually be able to make decisions in a way that would even apply.
There is no "human nature" in working a wage labor job. The rest of us are just doing completely alienated forms of labor with only freedom to choose which shit company to work for for a shit wage.
I think my ADHD has really made me extremely anti capitalist since I graduated from college 10 years ago. Ive lasted long enough in a well paying position to have some savings. But im getting older. I can't hyperfocus a months worth of work in a day like I use to. And I really just don't have the motivation to either. I know my career is gonna fall apart at some point in the next decade. Just hoping I can find something else to support myself. I just can't work on a computer anymore. My body literally can't take it. I can't think anymore. Brain keeps telling me to get up and go for a walk or something. And it's not even all physical. I can sit and work on one of my personal projects still. I just give absolutely zero fuck about writing some code for a company that is literally just making the world worse every day. (Microsoft if anyone's curious).
Switch the company to something that feels more meaningful, if you can.
I thought I had my dream job - being a research software engineer - but it turned out that there's only funding collected by corrupt professors, nobody has any clue where they want to go, most projects die the moment some PhD student graduates or there is some opportunistic incentive to just dump it and do something else, nobody even wants you to write software for them because it means they have to change their workflows, and all that leadership cares above is not useful software, but that it looks good in reports and presentations to get more funding.
Just saying, one can be perfectly miserable even when working for the supposed "good side". My motivation was at an all time low once I saw through all the bullshit and grew hopeless.
I quit that job after 3 years, and now I'm in a mid-size company with an interesting business domain, people care about my work, and I doing great. My team lead appreciates me, I get to actually do some stuff that's suitable for my qualification and also what I enjoy.
I think with ADHD we can't force ourselves to work in jobs that do not feel meaningful or intellectually stimulating. Other people are also suffering in bullshit jobs, but we literally cannot take it. But in the right environment we can thrive.
Ah, and "thanks" to whoever is responsible for the mess that is MSVC and Windows. I'm happy I can work on Linux 99% of the time (most teams are in Windows/ use Visual Studio), but we gotta support cross platform builds, and everything by Microsoft tends to be the odd, slow, half-broken special configuration, or imposes a limitation we have to work around. Because either it's not standard compliant or just buggy.
I totally can imagine how you can burn out from working at Microsoft. Feels like this company alone is wasting millions of hours of work all around the world.
The sedentary office lifestyle is genuinely disastrous for your health, both mental and physical. It's especially insidious owing to the fact that the effects are largely invisible, just massively increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. That's not to say that the other extreme of constant manual labor isn't also disastrous for your health, just that I don't think the health effects of a sedentary lifestyle are taken seriously enough by institutions and people in general.
There was a small push to promote "ergonomic" office setups and standing desks pre covid. But most of that died with working from home.
Also, it was just a way companies could use to avoid the fact that no amount of sitting posture or standing will counter the actual problems of just not moving for over 5 hours or more a day.
Oof, I think I might be you from about 13 years in the future, after it all falls apart and you are deep into putting it all back together knowing much more about yourself.
I'm trying to think of how to distill this down into something memorable yet meaningful...
Make your personal well-being a top priority in your daily life, and make actual decisions based on that. But this is easier said than done, because we all have differed customized manuals for our brains and bodies, and we do not get a copy, so we must reverse engineer it. So look for opportunities to do the thing that you know will lift your spirits or get you moving instead of the thing that you actually want to do. For me this was usually socializing with friends, or giving in when my son wants to play way too much and I'm in the middle of a game or project. Or with work, deciding to drive to work with the windows down rather than snoozing a bit longer and working from home because my ADHD ass is useless working from home.
Lean into your hobbies, especially if they do not involve what you do at work. Double especially if they get you outside. Make conscious decisions to funnel more of your time and money towards the big hobby. This should not feel like a commitment or homework, it should feel like permission to do something you already want to do. Having something to be eager and excited about, something to look forward to, is good for the mind. For me, this centers around nature and animals. We have tons of pets now, but my big hobby is my koi pond. I am upgrading it this year, so for several weeks I have been spending hours at a time outside playing in the dirt, doing construction. I am lifting heavy shit while listening to music and going extended periods without seeing a screen. My phone is often in some shade by my tools while I use wireless earbuds.
Oh and drugs are your friend. That goes for ADHD medication, other mental health meds, and of course weed used in the right ways.
Hope you find something that makes your life easier. I am about to graduate, and I'm already discouraged about finding a job as most jobs nowadays don't have direct impact.
Einstein only failed those because it was at a school being taught in a language he wasn’t familiar with if I am right.
Good to know, thank you. I only know them anecdotally as it's used to say "just because someone fails some exam don't discredit their intelligence".
The human brain is a spectrum, and is highly malleable. There aren't types of people - just people with more or less predisposition for certain traits.
That's not how evolution works. Groups of humans don't just naturally produce the "emergency thinker" phenotype when the group has too few. Individual genetic lines might find a set of local minima that work to them and stick to it, but this is because it is beneficial to those genes fitness - not because it benefits the group.
Former paramedic here. Chaos is so calming.
Everything is important and very interesting? There's clear priorities, maybe even a checklist? Sign me up.
I'm welcome to ignore everything else around me and to focus on one thing for as long as I need and that thing seems unsolvable to most people. Yes please.
Oh and driving a lot...
Not all heroes wear capes.
Me!!
When my boyfriend and i were short in time to get them a residents permit, without them having a job, i read law and planned finance so quickly and good that even the bureaucracy worker didnt know the forms i brought with me.
It all worked out great
If the crisis is imminent, visual, and physical yes. If the crisis is more abstract with letters and bureaucracy, it’s not the same.
This right here. If I can do something right now with my body to fix the problem, I'm locked in. If I have to call a bunch of people that I don't like and work patiently on things, not so much.
Me, when our cellar flooded because of heavy rainfall last fall: *overwhelmed* *panicattacc*
Me, when my wife proposes to go on a short vacation in two weeks: *overwhelmed* *panicattacc*
Their crisis managment skills have nothing to do with their ADHD. It my be inspite of it and good on them. I am not the least bit envious grumble grumble
Me in normal circumstances: "Don't perceive me, I am not here, attention is pain, under the radar is my happy place"
Me running tech for live events: "Something is fucky on stage mid-song, and I am here to fix it. Fuck your attention, I am unborking a thing here."
Ah interesting, this explains why I have always been really good at giving presentations. People always compliment me after the fact and ask how I stay so calm. The truth is that I'm extremely anxious during the whole thing and I just won't stop talking when that happens
I moments of crisis, I will just start crying, but I can do that very fast.
... unless I'm the cause of the crisis, then I'm a mess
"My life has been an ongoing series of crises. Move over, you weak-ass bitch, I've got the coping mechanisms for this."
This sounds uncannily like my EMR experiences.