I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. That is partially why I created this webapp: http://focusr.co/. It helps you focus on one thing at a time, which can be hard enough for people even w/o this diagnosis.
Actually, having grown up with ADHD and having an ex and 2 daughters with ADHD I can tell you this: We can all hyper-focus on things of interest. But only things that interest us. Attempting to get us to focus on things that are meaningless to us, no matter how meaningful to you or the world at large, no matter how important for our coursework or work, if they don't mean anything to us, we have a much worse time than the average non-ADHD person focusing on it.
I cannot say explicitly that all ADHD people have this trait, but having done a lot of reading and attended a lot of counselling sessions on it to learn to cope with children having it, it appears as though we're not alone in this. It's fairly common for ADHD kids to be able to hyper-focus on topics of interest.
My topic of interest from an extremely young age was figuring out how things work, making them work and making them work better. It's no surprise therefore that I ended up as a programmer.
My son's got an ADHD diagnosis and he seems like you. Whatever is slightly uninteresting is terribly difficult for him to focus on but if there's something interesting, he can maintain perfect focus for hours.
I imagine it might be days if he wasn't interrupted.
Can someone with ADHD give an example of a website that is well organized and architected that they find helpful as a counterexample to this site? I'm curious as someone parenting someone with ADHD what that would look like.
I think I have figured out that I have adult ADHD, the innatentive kind, with problems of directing focus where I want it to be. If you give me something interesting, I can commit and spend a day absorbed in it but it's extremely hard to direct my focus where I need it to be - my head is full of ten things at the same time. Once adrenaline hits and the deadline draws near I can focus well but over the last years this always resulted in a crunch-exhaustion cycle, I've been through hundreds of those with a weekly interval and I think I've burnt out on that a little.
I've discovered this in the past months, where, for the first time, I've only had one single project at work instead of more than two. Before, I blamed this inability to focus on the amount of different issues and projects (that were mostly non-related in terms of subjects) that I had but now...
Now I find it's equally hard to focus on the one thing without getting distracted - and adrenaline helps to get the focus, so my weekly productivity looks just like before with more projects, just fewer peaks.
I've only got an appointment in January for diagnosis but since the DSM-V wasn't updated in terms of adult ADHD, a diagnosis involves answering questionnaires about when you were a kid more than the actual situation now.
I have not been diagnosed with ADHD, nor do I think I have all the symptoms of it (the way I see people on ADHD subreddit talk about), but I totally understand the thing you're describing.
I do have a problem with focus while working. One thing which really helps me is if I put on some audiobook I don't really care to focus on too much about, or some podcast or lecture, but it helps me focus. Not all the time, but say I am working on solving a coding challenge, then the part where I figure out which solution would work, I can't listen to anything and I need to focus, but the part where I actually implement the solution(especially if I have implemented something like that many times) then I can only do it if there is something else to distract other parts of my mind.
I'm a founder with ADHD and have felt this struggle first-hand. It's like "why can't I focus on this? It's SO simple".
As mentioned in the article, a large component of the struggle is executive functioning, but there are tools like Double [0] that aim to provide a way to get around that struggle by pairing people up to do the same task together. It's actually a really neat concept that extends beyond ADHD![1]
My startup makes a tool that many ADHDers find to be helpful, called BeeLine Reader. It's been featured by a couple ADHD blogs and is periodically discussed on reddit's ADHD subreddit. HTH!
I'm interested too; feeling described to a T by your post. I struggled heavily with focus issues as a child / teen but it was never diagnosed far enough to try and medicate me out of it. As an adult with improved awareness of my attention issues, the prospect of pursuing a prescriptive fix that might just make me feel worse is intimidating.
Getting diagnosed with ADHD because you "can't focus" is comically easy. Millions of college kids, software engineers, investment bankers, and kitchen staff do it every year.
Having been recently diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive type), I never thought I had ADHD, because I COULD focus on things. I didn't realize that this hyper-focused state I would go into was a major sign of ADHD, especially since I couldn't stop focusing.
I, too, was one of the fortunate ones that hyper focused on computers and programming. This focus started at a very young age, and has since turned itself into a very rewarding career.
You are not alone! I believe there is a pretty strong correlation between software developers and ADHD. I feel like programming works well with the chemistry of an ADHD brain. Some of the best engineers I've met have been diagnosed with ADHD. There are a few that I believe have it, but I'm not sure if they've been diagnosed or not.
As a noob, can you guys give me an idea of what it is to live with ADHD? My understanding is that focus is a spectrum and different people are on different spots on that spectrum. I always imagine that something becomes a condition and gets a name (like ADHD) once it becomes an issue in your life and prevents you from functioning in society. When I hear that you're a staff engineer it sorts of tells me that it's not really an issue for you? Not saying that you don't struggle with focus, but everybody is, I imagine that some people can't even hold a job because of their lack of focus though.
It's interesting that people consider hyperfocus and lack-of-focus different. Essentially, they are two sides of the same coin.
ADHD is simply the lack of ability to control attention. There are drugs that work short-term, however long-term only methods of coping are really effective.
After reading everyone posts below, I figured I would direct you to my startup:
Effectively, your mind is like a programmable computer. Once you learn to recognize when you start losing focus, it's possible to program it (over time) to do something different. The idea being, neurofeedback therapy lets people better understand themselves and in-turn cope better.
After the brain has been reprogrammed it stays that way long-term (unless something else reprograms it).
If you are interested in reading more about neurofeedback, here's a literature overview:
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