Being a developer with ADHD

00:00 Do you feel like ADHD is holding you back? Maybe you don't personally have it, but you work with

00:04 folks who do and you'd like to support them better. Either way, how ADHD interplays with

00:09 programming and programmers is pretty fascinating. On this episode, we have Chris Ferdiniti,

00:14 who himself has ADHD and has written a lot about it to share his journey and his advice for thriving

00:21 with ADHD as a programmer or data scientist. This is Talk Python to Me, episode 473,

00:27 recorded July 11th, 2024.

00:29 Are you ready for your host, here he is!

00:35 You're listening to Michael Kennedy on Talk Python to Me. Live from Portland, Oregon,

00:40 and this segment was made with Python.

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02:34 Chris, welcome to Talk Python to me. Michael, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

02:38 I'm really looking forward to talking about this kind of meta developer topic. You know,

02:43 we're both developers and course creators and things like that, but there's a whole

02:48 mental side, focus side, flow side of programming that's honestly both important and kind of

02:54 interesting, right? If you get it right, it makes a big difference. Yeah, for sure. So looking forward

02:58 to talking to you about that stuff and everything else. But before, yeah, before we jump in though,

03:04 maybe, you know, tell the world who you are. Introduce yourself just a bit. Absolutely. So

03:08 Chris Ferdinand, I'm a web developer. I have ADHD, which is a big part of what we're talking about today.

03:13 My, for the last decade or so, I have been focused on building all things front end. Early in my career,

03:20 I felt like I couldn't get anything done. But since then, I've discovered a whole bunch of systems and

03:24 strategies that have let me turn my ADHD from sometimes a liability into occasionally a superpower.

03:31 So I've been talking to folks about tips and tricks for doing that. And when I'm not talking about ADHD,

03:36 I'm creating courses and workshops. I publish a couple of daily newsletters, speak at events,

03:41 and I work with some really cool clients. Fantastic. And you say you're a web developer,

03:45 like what's your tech stack? And we're not here specifically to talk Python, but you know.

03:50 Yeah. So for me, it's actually, it's almost exclusively front end. So HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

03:55 I occasionally reluctantly dabble in the backend, primarily PHP, because I learned web development

04:01 through WordPress. Although as we were talking about pre-show, I actually had the opportunity

04:05 recently to work on a project for NASA of all places, which was really cool, where Python was

04:10 the backend. And I was tying into some backend APIs with some JavaScript stuff, which was really fun,

04:17 really great to work with, super performant. It was a real, real joy to work with.

04:21 Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. I recently had kind of an experience with that, maybe a year ago

04:25 with Lauren, the guy who built our mobile apps that was all in Flutter and it was like lots of back

04:31 and forth. Now we've got to do that, make the API do this and like, well, and just super fun to work

04:36 that way. If you have good people on both ends, you know, I guess. Absolutely. And it was one of the

04:40 things where like, I knew a little bit about the backend and the backend guy knew a little bit about

04:44 the front end. So we could, we could talk to each other, but like we were not experts at each other's

04:48 thing. So it worked out really well. That sounds familiar. So front end stuff are, you got frameworks

04:54 that you, you work with? Are you a view person? Are you a rank person or, or something else?

04:58 Anti-framework feels a little strong. Earlier in my career, I was anti-framework. These days I am,

05:03 I'd say framework reluctant. I, a big part of what I advocate for folks is that on the front end,

05:10 there's a simpler, easier way to build things often that involves just using what the browser

05:14 gives you out of the box. A big part of that for me is that if you're a backend person, while the tools

05:20 you choose do matter, your front end users don't often pay as heavy a tax for those choices, but on

05:26 the front end, every... Sure. Unless it's really slow or something, but long as it runs fast enough,

05:30 they don't care. Exactly. But on the front end, every kilobyte that gets shipped is a kilobyte. The user has

05:36 to download, the browser has to parse, and the front end is just such a, like a, an unpredictable

05:41 and unforgiving environment. Unpredictable is the word. Right? Yeah. You just, you really don't know

05:45 what you're going to get. So I, I try to advocate for what I think is maybe a little bit more, more

05:51 simple or resilient a way of building things for the browser. And I guess a little bit of a dinosaur

05:57 in that regard. I love it. And you know, I was just thinking, I honestly thinking about ADHD,

06:01 front end stuff. I feel like generally JavaScript front end stuff makes me feel like I have ADHD

06:08 just from the pay attention to this. No, now this stop. Now this like, Oh my gosh, I can't focus.

06:13 You know, the velocity of change and not just change. Cause it's like, it's great that new stuff's coming

06:20 out. The fickleness, I think sometimes of the people who use the tools is really jarring where a thing that

06:27 is the right way to do something today is considered obsolete, like six to 12 months from now that can

06:32 get really frustrating as someone with ADHD. I think it's a big part of why kind of ignoring a lot of

06:38 that stuff is so appealing to me. Cause when you focus on web standards, even though new stuff comes

06:43 out, the old stuff continues to work just fine. And you don't have to throw out a whole mountain's

06:47 worth of knowledge every, every 12 months. So that's been really helpful as well.

06:51 Obviously I know the term ADHD. I know kind of what it means. I don't have a real good sense for in reality

06:58 what it is. Be a person with ADHD rather than just, it's hard to focus sometimes, you know, or your thoughts

07:03 wonder or something. Let's go with that. Let's yeah, for sure. Yeah. I'm sure that it is. So like, let's start

07:09 there. Yeah. So ADHD is, is, it's actually a really terrible name for what it is. So ADHD stands for

07:14 attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but people with ADHD don't actually have a deficit of

07:21 attention. I think it seemed that way in the eighties when the term was coined because the most

07:26 like stereotypical ADHD person was really hyperactive and kind of all over the place and like poorly

07:32 focused on things, but it's actually an executive, an executive functioning disorder. And one of its

07:38 hallmark features is that you have trouble regulating your attention. So sometimes that means you've got like

07:43 18 things going on in your head and you can't focus on any of them. Other times it causes this other

07:48 phenomenon called hyperfocus, which is a little bit like if you go into the zone as a developer,

07:53 except way more intense and you can't usually control what you're hyperfocused on. So sometimes

08:00 it's something really useful and awesome and like what you're supposed to be doing related.

08:04 And then other times it's like, Hey, I've got all these important things to do, but I can't stop

08:09 Googling stuff about like RVs and campers because that's currently currently what I'm really obsessed

08:18 with.

08:19 Right.

08:19 There's a whole bunch of other things that can be around ADHD a little bit like autism. ADHD has a

08:26 spectrum of symptoms. Not everyone who has it has all of them. Everybody's ADHD experience is a little

08:32 bit different, but you know, it can include things like having more, more severe emotional responses to

08:39 things than someone neurotypical might. Along with that, there's this other thing called RSD,

08:43 rejection sensitivity, dysphoria, where like a perceived slight, you will take much more like

08:50 deeply and personally than a neurotypical person might. It usually in a way that is like out,

08:54 out of scope for the actual size of the thing that happened to you. And these are things I didn't learn

08:59 about some of this stuff until like in the last few years. And it really like, I knew I had ADHD since

09:04 I was a kid. I was that stereotypical, really hyper kid. And I always just thought that's what it was.

09:08 And then about four or five years ago, I started hearing more about like some of the newer research

09:11 and discovered all these like things that I thought were just weird personal failings about me were

09:15 actually ADHD related.

09:17 Interesting. Okay.

09:17 Yeah. Another one is time blindness. So ADHD folks often just literally cannot perceive time accurately.

09:23 Sometimes it feels like it's going by really fast. Sometimes it feels like it's going by really slow.

09:29 In both cases, it's usually not, it doesn't feel like it, it actually is. And I know everybody experiences that

09:35 to some degree, but for ADHD folks, it is much more often, usually all the time. You can imagine if you

09:41 work in a situation where you need to make accurate estimates on things and accurately track your hours

09:47 that create some unique challenges there. And then the other thing with ADHD is you're not always hyper.

09:51 So there's three subtypes inattentive, which is exactly what it sounds like where you, you just,

09:57 you have trouble kind of regulating your focus. The other one is hyperactive. And that's actually,

10:02 so the impulsive variant is what used to be called ADD way back in the day. Now it's just all ADHD

10:09 with three different kinds of variants. And the other one is hyperactive or impulsive, which is,

10:13 I think what most people stereotypically think of as ADHD. And that doesn't often appear without

10:18 also having that like inattentive, I can't regulate my attention bit. And so many, many people have

10:25 what's called combined subtype, which were you're hyper and you have trouble regulating your focus.

10:29 I'm blessed with that kind.

10:30 Okay.

10:31 The inattentive variant is far, I'm rambling and I'm sorry, it's one of my superpowers.

10:35 The inattentive variant is both more common in women and far more underdiagnosed because it doesn't

10:42 show up with the hyperactivity. And so it's way less obvious. And so historically they thought ADHD was

10:49 primarily like a guy thing. And I think it's becoming a lot more obvious that many more women

10:56 have it than previously thought. They just don't usually get diagnosed because they don't often

11:02 show the hyperactivity part of it.

11:03 Right, right. They're not running around the classroom or something along those lines.

11:07 And you're like, This also led to that whole thing in the 80s of like, oh, it's overdiagnosed. That's just boys

11:14 being boys. Just all the stuff around that. So anyways, that's, I don't even want to say a nutshell

11:20 because that was very long winded, but that's, that's kind of the high level overview of what ADHD

11:25 is like. Yeah. It's fun. Except when it's not.

11:29 No, I'm sure. Well, you know, it sounds like some of those things are probably annoying when you need

11:35 them to not be there, right? Like if times feels like it's going super slowly, but it's not, you know,

11:41 like, oh gosh, this hour is like utterly dragging on her, but you can also use it for the powers of good.

11:46 Right. One thing I forgot to mention the kind of the, one of the root, like biological aspects of ADHD

11:52 is that our brains don't produce as much dopamine as they should. And so a majority of the symptoms

11:58 associated with it are related to like a dopamine shortage. So even like I recently learned that

12:04 your brain's ability to perceive time is actually related to how much dopamine you have, which I thought

12:08 was like a tick tock of like you receiving dopamine is almost like a time flow.

12:12 Right. And so a lot of the time flies fast when you're having fun as an ADHD person,

12:18 even more intensely, because that dopamine your brain wouldn't normally be producing enough of

12:22 gets ramped up when you're excited or you're enjoying yourself.

12:25 Like a desert, a dried up desert river versus when the monsoons come, it's like raging, right?

12:30 Exactly. Yeah. So there's no normal time for me. It's either moving very slowly or flying by

12:36 for better or worse. So I don't know how much you can, how much personal experience you want to can

12:42 bring to this really, but Jazzy out there asked like, do you think Python is a good language for

12:46 devs with ADHD? It's a great language to get stuff done quickly. It doesn't have too many symbols or

12:51 distractive other bits to it. For sure. So I generally think Python, yes. Programming in general is a great

12:59 profession. One of the things I'm finding is that ADHD folks seem overrepresented in development and

13:06 I would agree with that. Yeah.

13:07 I believe a lot of that has to do with the tight feedback loop you get with coding,

13:13 where you write some code, you run it, a thing happens or it doesn't. And you get that immediate,

13:17 like it worked, it didn't kind of feedback loop, which triggers the dopamine thing in your head

13:21 and then causes you to really like start, start digging into it. To answer Jazzy's specific question

13:27 though, even though I teach front end stuff over at gomakethings.com, I have so many front end students

13:34 who are like, I wanted to learn backend language. And I, I went with Python because it's really,

13:38 really clear. And there's a lot of like, this is the correct way to do things. Whereas like JavaScript,

13:42 like anything you want to do, there's at least three different ways you could do it. And none of them are

13:46 inherently better than the other. Right. And there's four frameworks that came out this week to help you

13:50 do it. Yeah. So I probably, I don't have enough Python experience to like accurately say like,

13:57 yes, that's the right one. But I just, I think programming in general is a, it is a profession or hobby.

14:03 If you just want to do it for fun, that plays well to the ADHD mind. It can trigger that time is flying

14:10 by really fast because I'm, if not enjoying it, at least very engaged in the activity. And it can make

14:15 what would feel like work for a normal person feel like a really enjoyable, fun thing that you can't

14:20 get enough of. There are downsides to that too. Like you could go through like an eight hour,

14:24 like just coding bender and find that you haven't eaten, used the bathroom, gotten up to stretch in any way,

14:30 taking care of yourself because your body just didn't let you know.

14:33 Yeah. Well, I've, I've had those experiences as well. And I don't know if there's some aspect of

14:38 ADHD or if it's just, I just got really focused, but I've certainly gotten up and I'm like, why is it

14:45 dark? How is it dark? Gosh, I am hungry. I'm going to have to deal with some of this stuff.

14:50 Yeah. The thing, so that, that hyper-focus for, for ADHD folks, I heard, I had an old coworker who

14:56 used to refer to that as weaponized ADHD. So if you can get yourself into that state often, you can be

15:02 like way more productive than your peers. The problem is you can't always like force yourself

15:09 into hyper-focus. There's no like, Oh, I just flipped the switch and I'm there. Right? So you will have

15:13 periods of intense productivity. And then you might have some periods where you're less productive

15:17 than both your average and the average of your coworkers.

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16:48 Depending on your work situation, that can lead to some uncomfortable conversations where it's like,

16:55 hey, you did really great last quarter and this quarter you can't seem to get anything done.

16:59 What's going on?

16:59 I can see that. Do you feel like the folks with ADHD, like that, they're more susceptible to

17:05 maybe the fluctuations of those two things from a sort of flow state to like, I'm not feeling it,

17:10 but I got it. I got a job. It's time to just grind it until I feel it again. Do you feel like those

17:15 fluctuations are wider? Like you're less productive when you feel it less and you're maybe even more

17:20 productive when you're in the game? The other piece of this that's really tough is so where a

17:26 neurotypical person might be like, man, I'm not feeling it today, but I'm not going to keep

17:31 working here if I don't do the thing. Right. ADHD person will go into like this almost like freeze

17:37 state. Yeah. Okay. And I think that's actually the, like the official like psychology term for it,

17:42 but you can stare at your screen for eight hours, not get up and you won't type like a line of code.

17:47 You'll just be like trying to just the inertia of getting started is really, really tough.

17:52 It's like writer's block, but it is. Yeah. That's literally, it's like writer's block,

17:55 except your brain just will not will your body to do what it needs to do. Yeah. And so one of the

18:00 things, so over at ADHD for the wind.com, I've been writing a lot about my, my ADHD experience and

18:08 kind of some tips and recommendations on how to get around a lot of this stuff. And one of the things

18:13 that I, and a lot of other folks have found is that traditional productivity advice just does not

18:18 work for most folks with ADHD. So like if you're a proponent of like getting things done or some of

18:25 those other, those other systems, a lot of times what they'll tell you is start with your basic,

18:29 biggest task and get that done first. That way it's out of the way. Big tasks trigger massive

18:34 overwhelm in the ADHD brain. If you are not already like, I cannot wait to chew this task up and spit it

18:41 out because I'm so excited about it. Right. And sometimes even then. So one of the things that I wrote

18:45 about recently was that I actually think folks should start with their smallest task first,

18:49 because the most important thing is getting moving. You're almost like this big rock and you've got a

18:54 lot of inertia. And right now that inertia is telling you stay right where you are. Once you get rolling,

18:59 sometimes you can move yourself into the state where you become difficult to stop. So the most important

19:04 thing is just start doing something that moves you in the direction of work. So maybe go for the small

19:09 things, right? Cause they're easy wins and you get, get that dopamine, like prime the pump sort of.

19:14 Exactly. So for me, a lot of times that I start my morning off by writing my daily tech article,

19:20 because they're really short. It's one of those things where I, it's like a habit for me now.

19:24 And it gets me, I'm at a desk, I'm typing and I've produced a thing and I shipped it. And now I can get

19:30 on with the rest of my day. And I'm like in work mode. And if I have a day where I have a meeting in

19:35 the morning and I don't get to do that, it will derail me for literally hours. That actually happened to me

19:41 this morning. Actually, I had a, I had a, like a client meeting and it was first thing in the

19:44 morning. It was a really great meeting. It was super productive, but I didn't like ship anything.

19:49 And so then when the meeting ended, I was like really underproductive for about two hours,

19:54 which is kind of like, kind of stuck, not able to get going again. Interesting.

19:58 Interesting. Annoying. Also very, very, very annoying. It is super annoying. However,

20:03 knowing at least awareness of that is pretty interesting.

20:06 So this is, I guess the next, a nice segue here, Michael, is that one of the big things

20:12 that I advocate for, while I admit that ADHD has a lot of challenges, like the one I just described,

20:16 I'm also someone who's ADHD positive. I don't think it's like this thing I have to deal with.

20:21 I guess in a manner of speaking, it is, but it's not like, oh, this has ruined my life.

20:25 And so a big part of what, here's why I can't do anything with the rest of my life. I'm a big part

20:30 of what I advocate for is working with your ADHD instead of against it. So like, I know that that,

20:36 that is a thing that happens. Like if I feel that I'm in one of those moods where I just can't get

20:39 moving, no amount of staring at the screen is going to change that. What is going to change that is

20:44 doing a handful of other things that usually involve not using my brain at all. There are a

20:50 whole bunch of activities that will produce dopamine in your brain. And that usually helps.

20:55 So drinking coffee or soda or something with caffeine in it. The core mechanism by which

21:00 most ADHD medicines work is by either making your brain make more dopamine or stopping your brain

21:06 from absorbing the stuff it does make so that more of it like floats around exercise, literally just

21:11 getting exposure to sun. So I, now that I am old, I've started gardening, which gets me like two for

21:17 one. So I'll go outside. I dig some holes. I move some heavy, like literally heavy rocks around,

21:22 gets me going. I get some sun. I don't have to think I'm just using my hands. And then I come in

21:27 and I will get like eight hours worth of work done in about three or four hours. Cause I, I'm now I'm

21:33 ready. That's awesome. It's really like a big, a big part of the ADHD experience is learning to listen

21:38 to your body and just step away. Like staring at a screen is not going to help you. Not that you're

21:43 weak for stepping away. It's not, your persistence is not necessarily going to help you if you can't sort of

21:49 reset a little bit. I think that's, that's true for a lot of people for me. I don't know if it's

21:55 the same thing. I'm probably going to say that a lot this episode, but for me, one of the things that

22:00 I've tried to embrace that sounds familiar is inspiration. I find that if I'm really psyched to

22:06 work on something or I'm just like, I really don't want to do this, but I got to get it done.

22:10 There's like a five X difference in productivity for me. And so if, if I, it's, it's like, I'm an adult,

22:16 I should be able to just to pay attention. And it's like, there's a right thing. No, no, it's

22:20 ridiculously out of whack. And so I can find if, if I can just, okay, now is not the time for that.

22:26 This afternoon might be the time for that. What else can I do? Maybe, you know, maybe I'll go for a ride

22:30 in my motorcycle for an hour in the mountains and get some sun and come back sort of reset or just,

22:35 just grind on email or, or stop grinding email, whatever it is, like just change that up and try to

22:41 sense the inspiration or the lack thereof in my brain for some something. And then try to

22:46 ride that wave when I see it coming, you know, one of the things that you touched on a couple of times

22:50 brought up, Hey, I do that too. So the thing with ADHD is I could describe a whole range of symptoms

22:56 and most people will be like, Oh, that happens to me sometimes. And it does because most ADHD symptoms

23:02 are things that everybody experiences sometimes. And so kind of the, the difference between I have

23:08 ADHD and don't have ADHD or what would lead you to have a doctor be like, yes, you have it. It's

23:14 usually a, like a measurement of like how often and how many of these things you experience on the

23:19 regular. When you get diagnosed, there's a whole set of questions you have to answer. And the doctor

23:24 adds up a bunch of numbers. And if you hit a high enough number, they're like, yeah, you probably have

23:28 ADHD. Interesting. Okay. So kind of like, if you ask somebody, have you ever felt like down in the

23:34 dumps? Have you ever felt today is hopeless or whatever? Like almost everyone's going to have a

23:38 day where they're like, yup, today is hopeless. Crash the car, did this and whatever. But that doesn't

23:42 mean you're necessarily have depression, right? And like, for sure. And so the questions will be like,

23:47 you know, how often do you have trouble? I'm just making this up. How often do you have trouble

23:51 paying attention to something if you're not interested in it? Right. And it's like occasionally

23:56 always, you know, like, and so you'll have a bunch of those questions that are basically rewordings of

24:01 questions you already answered to account for like bias in yourself. And then you get a number,

24:06 like each column has a number, the doctor adds it up. And if you hit the minimum number, you've got ADHD

24:12 basically. Yeah. Got it. There are self-assessments that you can do too, by the way, if anybody's

24:18 listening, I wonder if I have ADHD. A psychiatrist who diagnoses you will be able to prescribe you

24:23 medication, if that's something you're interested in. But if you just think you might have it as a

24:27 first step, if you head over to ADHD for the wind.com slash talk Python, I have a bunch of resources.

24:33 And one of them is, Oh, how do I know if I have ADHD? I got a link to that self-assessment there. So you

24:38 can kind of dig in and, and find that. That's awesome. Yeah. You put together some proper,

24:42 well, that way, you know, just a proper stuff for the show that we're going to talk about a bunch of

24:46 stuff. If I missed anything that we talk about, I'm going to go back and update this later.

24:49 I just want to make sure folks have what they need. Yeah. That's awesome. I'll definitely put

24:52 that in the show notes for folks and people can sign up for your newsletter. There's a lot of daily tips

24:56 and we can maybe riff on those a little bit before we get to that though. You talked about meetings

25:01 and I think meetings, I just saw where, gosh, I can't remember where it was. I think it was the

25:05 Atlantic.com Atlantic, the publication. And it said something to the effect of like white collar work

25:10 is just meetings now. I don't think that's a hundred percent true with development, but

25:16 you know, it's a lot. And I think it's, it can be a challenge. And I think it can be especially a

25:21 challenge for people with ADHD. One thing that I read that connected pretty well with me is Paul

25:26 Graham's maker schedule, manager schedule. I don't know if people have read this before is from 2009,

25:31 but I think it's still, it's probably more relevant than ever. Please email me that Paul Graham is

25:35 great or terrible. I'm not trying to promote the guy or not that just, I know VC's always

25:39 get a lot of reactions, but this is pretty interesting saying that like, look, there are

25:43 people whose job it is to have meetings and to them, they see blocks on the calendar as, well,

25:49 here's another part of my job that I can do. And for the rest of us who are trying to write code and

25:53 focus, this is a disruption. And you talked about how it can really derail like half a day for you.

25:58 So first of all, how's this, are you familiar with this? And how's this idea set with you?

26:02 If I weren't on your show, I'd probably be one of those folks emailing you about Paul. So I'm going

26:06 to, I'm going to not comment on the article specifically, but what I do want to talk,

26:10 let's put it away. Yeah. But what I do related to that, I don't know that I have strong feelings on

26:14 like makers versus managers and whatnot, but what I do, what I do know is that task shifting is

26:22 particularly difficult for ADHD folks, largely because it's so difficult to get into that focus period.

26:30 Like you think about a neurotypical developer gets interrupted from focus and it takes them a little

26:34 bit to get back into it. It is way more intense for the average person with ADHD. So they create this

26:42 effect that I've heard described as like a temporal dead zone where if I finish a task and I have a

26:48 meeting 30 to 60 minutes from when I finished that task, I will not start another task. Because if I do,

26:54 I know that by the time I actually get up enough like momentum that I'm doing the task, I'm going to get

27:00 interrupted. And that's either going to, I'm going to miss the meeting, which used to happen to me

27:05 constantly, or I'm going to get annoyed that I have to stop. And the whole time I'm in the meeting, my brain

27:10 will be fixated on the other thing and not the meeting. I won't start a new task. So I've got this whole block of

27:16 time that gets eaten. And then when the meeting ends, now I've got this long on ramp to get shifted

27:23 back into my next task after the meeting. So meetings are bad for developers in general. They're

27:30 extraordinarily bad for folks with ADHD. And one of the things I talk about is some strategies you can

27:35 use to try to, you can't always make it work, but I used to employ a ton of strategies when I had

27:40 like a day job to prevent myself from getting booked in midday meetings. I don't mind them at

27:46 the beginning of the day. I prefer them more in the afternoon when I run out of like developer steam,

27:50 but a meeting at like 11 or two in the afternoon just, just destroys my day.

27:56 I hear you. Yeah. Where I was going with that article is what I've, I've ended up doing is I have

28:01 just certain days blocked off where those are no meeting days. And that's because I have the

28:05 flexibility for it. And you know, you'd be in, you're doing this stuff independently now, not a

28:10 nine to five. Is that right? Yes. But even when I was at a nine to five, I used to do stuff like that

28:14 because you, you just, you gotta, depending on the culture you're in, like some places are just full

28:19 of excess meetings and it becomes very necessary. Your job is to go to the meetings. I mean,

28:24 there's the whole joke, right? About like this meeting could have been an email. I have found that

28:28 some companies are worse at that than others. Some environments I've been in, they're really cool

28:33 about async communication. Other places like the de facto is just block time on people's calendar.

28:38 And that is awful. I don't, I don't know where this social expectation that you could just block time

28:44 on someone's calendar at any point for any reason came from, but it's awful.

28:48 Exactly. I'm going to reach out. I'm going to grab some time with you. It's like, hold on.

28:52 If that's just open-ended. Yeah. I found that article. I'll link it. A white collar work is just

28:56 meetings now. It's interesting.

28:57 Yeah. So good blocking, blocking time, I think is a great strategy.

29:02 I guess one tangential thing here, cause it's not just meetings, right? It's if you're in office

29:07 and you're in an open office environment, the pop-in is an absolute nightmare. If you have ADHD,

29:13 I mean, we've, I'm sure you've seen before Michael articles about how open office environments are bad

29:18 for productivity. Just generally, again, it's one of those things worse. If you have ADHD,

29:22 ADHD, if you're on a remote team, sometimes there's a culture on Slack or discord that like replicates

29:29 that open office environment, pop-in where you're expected to just always like respond quickly on

29:34 those tools. So there are two paths you can take. If you have ADHD and this stuff is messing with your

29:38 day, you can either ask for forgiveness instead of permission and just take what you want.

29:44 For a long while, I just, I had this thing where I would, I would just turn off Slack and I would

29:49 check it like two, maybe three times a day. And if someone really, really needed me, my manager had

29:54 my cell phone and he could call me if it was like super, super important. Same thing with email,

29:59 that kind of thing. So that's one path. The other path is you can have a conversation with your manager.

30:05 The laws around this vary from country to country, but in America specifically where I live,

30:10 the Americans with Disabilities Act requires companies to provide reasonable accommodations

30:15 for disabilities and ADHD actually qualifies as one. So you can say things like I need to be able to work

30:22 from home or you need to give me a private office where the team lead who keeps shooting Nerf darts at

30:27 my head can't do that anymore. Or that's a real story that used to happen to me in a previous employer.

30:32 Thank gosh. Or I need to have days where I don't have meetings or it would be really great for me

30:38 if more of our communication happened asynchronously. Or if you ask me to do things, I need someone to

30:44 follow up in writing with that, or I'm going to forget, right? There's like a whole series of

30:47 things you could ask for. I have a list of accommodations over at my site as well that I'll

30:52 make sure ends up in the cheat sheet I put together for this episode. But yeah, asking your employer,

30:57 if you feel comfortable, can be a great thing to do. I am at a point in my career where I feel

31:02 very comfortable having those conversations. And I bring it up with clients. For the last

31:06 four or five years of my working career, I brought it up with my employers, any of my managers,

31:11 I would bring it up in job interviews. But I am a cisgendered, heterosexual, white dude with a whole

31:19 lot of professional experience. And I have talked to more junior developers, people who are LGBTQ,

31:24 people who are minorities. And they have all told me some version of, I already feel like I'm under more

31:30 scrutiny because of my gender, my skin color, my identity. And I don't want to give my employer

31:37 another reason to look at my work more closely. I'm realizing as I'm saying this, I fully acknowledge

31:42 that I'm in a privileged position to be able to do that. But if you feel comfortable, it can,

31:47 in the right culture, make your life at work a lot better and a lot easier.

31:51 I totally agree. Do you feel like the work from home stuff has been a boon?

31:55 It has for me. I have also talked to some ADHD folks who they feel like it doesn't have enough

32:03 structure. Isn't the right word. There's like a bit of an accountability that can happen when you're in

32:08 the office where just seeing other people doing work means that if you are sitting at your desk and you

32:13 look like you're not doing work, that's bad. So it gives them at least a bit of a, like a push to start

32:18 moving. And there is a technique called body doubling where you literally like just sit on a

32:23 live cam with someone else and co-work and silence together that is supposed to address this. I find

32:28 it deeply uncomfortable. I actually prefer to not do that, but I do know some ADHD folks find it helpful.

32:34 But for me, I went remote pre-pandemic. I had been remote for a while and it had been the single best

32:41 thing for my productivity that I've ever done. Even before 2020, it was like a non-starter for me for any job I

32:48 applied for after I had gone remote that I would never go into an office again. I mean, I hear you. I did. I've done

32:54 that since 2006. And so it's just like, that's how work is for me.

32:58 Absolutely. I think it was like 2009-ish for me. I was hybrid and then I went full and it was just

33:04 not without its own challenges, right? Because if there are days where you just, you're not into it,

33:09 it's really easy for me to then not do anything. And that's fine every now and then. But if it happens

33:15 too much, you can find yourself in a situation where you've got like a big backlog of work that

33:19 just didn't get done and that's bad. But yeah, on the whole, I would say it's been a huge blessing.

33:23 It's not a problem to focus. It's not a problem. Like there's too many distractions. Like over there

33:28 is my sim racing machine. If I'm feeling like I can't, I just get up and go do that instead. And

33:33 then eventually like I do that half the day. And I, you know, like if that were how work from home

33:37 worked for me, I could see that's, that's bad, not at Boone. And so what do you like, there's a negative

33:41 side to work from home as well. And like trying to stay focused and not do the dishes and whatever.

33:45 Doing dishes, being like pulled to do the dishes is usually not a problem for ADHD folks. We usually

33:51 have the other problem, which is, Oh God, I haven't done the dishes in days.

33:54 Why does the kitchen look like that? How'd that happen?

33:55 Right? No, I know why. I just, I feel a deep shame about it and won't address it. But

34:00 the bigger challenge with work from home is if you don't have a dedicated space to do work,

34:08 you can run into some of what you just described. You can also run into a situation where there's just

34:13 a lot of other stuff around you. If there's other people at home, you have a partner who also works

34:17 from home or you have, you have kids and it's like summertime and they're home. Like it can be

34:22 loud. It can be noisy. It can be distracting, distracting rather. I don't find the pull of

34:26 other stuff in my house that bad because I am coding on what is effectively a very expensive,

34:32 like gaming and video streaming machine. And it has enough distractions just on the thing I have to do

34:39 work on already. So there's really not much else. Yeah. There's really not much else in my house.

34:43 That's more appealing than the thing I'm sitting in front of to do, to do work on.

34:48 That's true. Nothing is as distracting as my phone and my computer already. So I'll just go with that.

34:53 They're right here with me all the time. Yes. All the time. Yeah. So that part less so it's more

34:57 the like the noise. If you don't have a quiet place to work, that can be challenging, but I don't

35:02 think any necessarily any more so than the office. It's just, you're in basically the same position.

35:06 You're in your own open office sort of deal. Yeah. You put together a couple of tools that you,

35:10 maybe we could talk a bit about building a second brain. This comes from the book by Tiago Forte,

35:16 I believe, which I read not too long ago. Pretty interesting book. There's lots of software to

35:20 accomplish this. I love Notion and actually AnyType is what I've moved away from Notion towards. It was

35:25 just like similar, which is super fun. Open source Notion basically. Yeah.

35:30 So I've been using Obsidian.

35:31 AnyType.io.

35:32 Yeah. I've heard that there's a lot of similarities of those. One thing we didn't talk about when we

35:37 talked about like symptoms of ADHD, we have ADHD folks usually have a very large hard drive and a

35:44 very small amount of RAM. So we can only keep one or two things in our working memory at any particular

35:49 point. And second brains are great for everyone. But if you tell me three things, there's a good chance

35:56 I will have forgotten the first two by the time I get back to my desk. And so the idea of a second

36:03 brain specifically for folks with ADHD is that it becomes the RAM that your brain doesn't have.

36:10 So any idea that pops into your head, any task you've been given, any thought, anything that you

36:17 don't want to forget 30 seconds from now needs to get written down somewhere. It can be paper. It can

36:22 be digital. Both have their pros and cons. I'm biased towards digital for being able to search,

36:27 but writing things down seems to make stuff stick a little bit better in a lot of folks' heads.

36:31 Are you trying to memorize it or are you trying to store it, put it on a digital ice? So I think a quick

36:37 definition for folks, I mean, they can imagine what a second brain is, but give people a definition of

36:42 what this means. A second brain, and I'm not gonna, I'm probably not gonna do justice to like the official

36:47 definition here, but the idea of a second brain is that it's literally just a place for you to write down

36:55 or capture all the things. It's funny, I've read so many different descriptions of it. And in my head,

37:01 it always just brings me back to the ubiquitous capture device or UCD from getting things done,

37:07 part Lance. I think it's just like a, in my opinion, it's just a, like a rebranding of that

37:12 thing. But the idea is you just, you want a place to capture and write down all the things you don't

37:17 want to forget later. It sounds good to me. I, as a description, I think what I got from reading the

37:22 book, there's a process for capturing the stuff and filtering it and putting, I don't know if I need

37:26 any of that. What I need is it's in my mind and it needs to get written down in basically a place

37:32 I could get back to it if I, if I want to, or even put a reminder around it. Just, just put it, like

37:37 you said, just get it out of RAM, swap it to disk for a while conceptually, and you can get back to it

37:43 if you need, right? The thing with, because I know you mentioned Notion, I like Obsidian. There's a lot of

37:48 different tools out there. One of the problems for ADHD folks with most digital tools is most of the

37:56 tools available today do a lot. And that is kind of the problem. So I'm going to use Obsidian because I

38:03 know it well, but Notion, having played with it before is very similar in like capability and what

38:10 it can do. So I look at a tool like Obsidian, which is mark down notes that you can kind of access and edit

38:17 through a GUI and organize into folders and things like that. And it has a plugin ecosystem. And you

38:23 will see similar with like, with a tool like Notion, like there are consultants who specialize in teaching

38:29 you how to get the most out of Notion. And you can build these really complicated workflows where

38:34 you can tie things from a page into another page and then things show up automatically in these

38:38 different views and you get these graphs and that all sounds really fun. It's amazing. I close this thing

38:43 in my Kanban board on GitHub, which triggers a thing, which will move this into this page. And then

38:48 Sarah gets a notification. You're like, Oh my goodness.

38:51 That sounds fun. And that sounds like an interesting challenge. And it sounds almost like a game. And if I

38:56 have a brain that craves dopamine and enjoys kind of gamified experiences, I'm going to spend hours,

39:02 days, weeks, perfecting my to do system to the expense of doing the actual things I need to do.

39:09 And then down the road, I'm going to be like, Oh, this is so complicated and difficult to manage.

39:14 This isn't working for me anymore. And I'm going to throw it away. I'm going to go repeat this process

39:18 again with something new. I talked to a lot of ADHD folks who feel like productivity systems just don't

39:23 stick. And a big part of that is because they're, they're overcomplicated. I think the thing I found

39:27 that works best for a lot of, for me, and I've talked to a lot of folks who've had similar experiences

39:31 is simple to do lists. Like everything is a bulleted list. Even if it's like an idea you want to remember

39:36 later, it's a bulleted list. It might not be a to do that you have to check off, but it's a bullet.

39:40 And when I use tools like notion or obsidian, or even a paper notebook, excuse me, everything is,

39:47 everything is bullets. I install almost no plugins, no add ons. The only thing I have is a my day view,

39:54 where when I tag things with a unicorn emoji, they show up on my day. That way I can just flag the,

39:59 and I like unicorns because they're fun, but it's just, it's the place where these are the things I

40:03 need to do today. I can see them all on one page and that's it. I think one of the tools I've found

40:08 that used to work still works really well for me, but it's occasionally a little bit buggy now,

40:12 Microsoft to do, which is their free to do app. I like it because it does less than tools like

40:18 to do list, which does a lot. Like it's basically just bulleted lists with sub lists under them.

40:23 And you can flag stuff in this special, I'm going to do it today page. And it doesn't have any of the

40:29 other stuff, which makes it way less distracting. Sure. I'm a fan of to do is. Oh yeah. The only

40:34 reason I moved away from it is I really like authoring and markdown and I wanted something

40:38 that let me do that. Yeah. That's why I like notion. You just write markdown and it just becomes,

40:43 comes magic or you forward slash it. I'm a fan of to do this, but it's, I try to just not over

40:48 complicate it. Just, just kind of have a flow. Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I say, I say like,

40:53 oh, do you use obsidian or notion? Just don't make it too complicated, but you could do that

40:56 and to do is too. Sure. They're all it's that's the, whatever tool you choose,

40:59 just resist the urge to over-engineer it. I know it's tough, but like, you'll be much happier in

41:04 the long run. Just put the extensions down. Yeah. Another thing you gave a shout out to

41:08 was the Apple watch, which I love my Apple watch. It is increasingly, it is a second brain for me in

41:14 weird ways. Like for example, an hour and a half ago, I was recording a course and I put everything

41:20 on do not disturb. I'm like, don't forget to come do the podcast with Chris in an hour and a half. So

41:25 I just, Hey, set a reminder for an hour and 20 minutes. And then I just, I didn't stress it. I

41:31 just took the weight off my brain. I could focus back on the course and then, oh, it's time to go.

41:36 Like, all right. My wife is the reason I have an Apple watch. I was very resistant because in my mind,

41:40 I'm like, I don't need, I'm already like too distractible. I don't need another thing

41:44 chirping at me. That sounds like you literally are putting distractions on my arm. I can't get it off.

41:48 What are you thinking here? She was like, please just try it. I think it's going to be really helpful

41:52 for you. And I did. And she was right because before I got the Apple watch, I used to miss meetings

41:58 constantly. They would go off on my phone. I would snooze them. And then, or I'd more likely I'd just

42:04 dismiss them by accident. And then five minutes later, the meeting would start and I wouldn't be there

42:09 because I got sucked back into something else. So having that like right on your wrist,

42:13 for some reason is a real game changer for me. I set timers for literally everything, laundry,

42:20 food that I put in the oven, anything that needs to get done gets a timer. And then the one thing that

42:25 I haven't written about yet, but that has really helped is the one place where you don't usually

42:29 have your second brain is in the shower. And I do a lot of thinking in the shower and I have some of my

42:34 best ideas and I'll be damned if from the time I have the idea to the five minutes later,

42:39 when I get out and drying myself off, I have already forgotten it happens all the time.

42:42 But if you have the watch, you can just dictate a note to yourself or text yourself or do something.

42:48 And then you have it and you can like do stuff with it later. I used to have an old manager who

42:53 literally had one of those like scuba diving chalkboards with the, like the grease pen in

42:58 his shower. So that he can write down ideas. Yeah. This feels like the digital version of that to me,

43:05 where you just, you know, like, Hey Siri, send a, you know, write a note that says,

43:08 and then you're off to the races. And for all the failings of Siri, that,

43:13 that actually works pretty well. Like the few things like set a timer, set a reminder,

43:18 like they actually work quite well. You just hold the crown. And I honestly, though,

43:22 now that I'm talking about these two things in parallel with you, I feel like it is sort of my

43:25 second brain of like reminders and attention in a sense. One of two things would always happen to me.

43:30 I would either over fixate on the thing so that I don't miss it, or I would completely ignore the

43:35 thing and miss it. And the Apple watch lets me do the latter without missing the thing. So I can free

43:42 my brain to do other stuff. And I know I'm not going to miss my events, my important stuff.

43:46 And people out there who are like, I'm not an Apple person. Why are they like,

43:50 you couldn't get a Google where Android where and do basically the same thing I imagine.

43:54 I don't have a lot of experience with those, unfortunately, because I am

43:57 very big into the Apple ecosystem, but I need to stop saying Apple watch and start talking about

44:01 smartwatches more generally, because you're right. My biggest disappointment with the Apple watch is

44:05 that it requires an iPhone to work. I think that's dumb and annoying.

44:09 It's completely dumb. But if that's you, if you don't have an iPhone in the Apple ecosystem,

44:15 I would look at some of the Android options because I think just the smartwatch in general has been a

44:19 really amazing tool for me, probably one of the most important in my toolkit.

44:23 It's so frustrating. I don't want to go down this at all, but I was looking at the nothing,

44:27 you know, the nothing phones, nothing. They're super interesting. They're really quite different.

44:32 I seem to recall this from a few years ago. Let's see.

44:35 They've got some interesting different ways about like, they've got stuff on the back that will

44:41 like flash and they communicate things and swap your own or am I thinking of something else?

44:46 No, that's framework.

44:47 Ah, okay.

44:48 So they've got like these, it's like hieroglyphics on the back that mean different things if they like

44:52 light up and like, this is cool. I kind of want to play with this stuff, but that my Apple watch

44:56 would basically be dead. Like you can't, I'm like, well, I'm not, I'm going nowhere.

45:00 I can't imagine why Apple would do that. It's really strange.

45:02 I can't. It's so, it's so, it makes no sense. It must be an oversight, right? Clearly.

45:07 We've got a little bit of time left, maybe 10 minutes. So what do you think about maybe going

45:12 through some of those daily tips or something like the idea of them and maybe just pick a couple

45:17 that you want to just give a shout out to? How's that sound?

45:19 One of the things I'm, I'm in the middle or I said the beginning of a series on how to get stuff done

45:24 when you have ADHD and I'm breaking it into two parts. One of them is like, I'm calling it productivity.app,

45:31 which is my, like my approach to getting stuff done. And then the other one is hacking your brain's

45:35 operating system. and the hacking your brain's operating system feels like there's potentially some

45:44 interesting nuggets in there. I'm looking through the list though. And I actually think

45:48 we've talked about most of them. Yeah. That's where just organically they have all, cause you brought

45:54 up the Apple watch and that would have been the one that doesn't always get brought up, but you brought

45:57 it up.

45:58 One other thing though, I will say this happened the other day I wrote about, but I think one of

46:02 the things I've, I've come to realize is there are certain types of work that lend within the development

46:08 space, which lend themselves better to the ADHD brain than others. And so I look at something like

46:15 agency work. Agency work can be like a blessing or a curse depending on the agency. And I know that's,

46:22 again, generally true, but quick definition for people who are new to programming or outside of

46:27 the consulting world agency work. What is that?

46:29 This would be like a development agency that builds some sort of thing. Could be a mobile app,

46:36 could be a website, whatever it happens to be for a variety of different clients. So they have a range

46:41 of clients they work with and they get contracted and you are a developer on that team. And I contrast

46:45 that against being an in-house developer where you're like, I work at IBM and I manage all of the web

46:51 properties for IBM, or I build this app for IBM, whatever happens to be.

46:55 I build the authentication integration between all our internal apps and keep them running or whatever.

47:00 Exactly. So this is more like, you're like a bee floating from client to client. That can be awesome.

47:06 If you're the right kind of agency, that means you're constantly getting variety in clients and work.

47:12 So you've got novelty and you can just absolutely crush it with that kind of work. However, sometimes you have

47:19 agencies that are like, we build WordPress sites for ice cream shops. That's all we do. We know it.

47:24 And you get to a point where it's like, it's cookie cutter. And that is just mind-numbingly boring.

47:31 It can be easy work. It can be work that you do very effectively, that you can apply unique aspects of

47:38 that to each of your different clients in different ways. But it can also run the danger of triggering

47:43 the whole like, oh, this is really boring. I can't get anything done. Reflex. Agencies often,

47:49 to 90% of the time, are really focused on billable hours. So a lot of what you're doing is saying,

47:54 I think it's going to take me X amount of hours to do, then tracking how many hours it took you to do,

47:59 and billing those hours. And those two things are absolute nightmares for the ADHD brain.

48:04 So if you find an agency that does like flat billing, where they're like, we charge X to build you Y,

48:08 awesome. Or they do a variety of different work can be really awesome. But often that's not the case.

48:14 So where I find that a lot of folks with ADHD really do their best work is when they are not

48:20 time constrained. And the nature of the role is more, we've got this big hairy challenge,

48:25 and we're not really sure how to figure it out. We need someone who's really into problem solving to

48:29 go like research it and tackle it. And you happen to find the problem interesting. Because if it's just

48:35 one of those things, you're in trouble. But if it's a big hairy problem, and you find it interesting,

48:40 and they're not like you have 12 hours to figure this out, that can work really, really well for you.

48:45 Some of the best roles that I've had, you're riding the wave of the deep, the deep, the super focus,

48:50 the hyper focus, and just like killing it. Yeah, it hits multiple things at once. The challenge,

48:55 triggers the like the dopamine thing. It allows you to dig into that like hyper focus really,

49:00 really deep and crush a whole bunch of work and look like an absolute rock star. It's one of those

49:05 things too, where like once you once you get fixated on a thing, it's all you'll think about. And so you'll

49:10 just keep pulling at that thread until you've got it figured out. Yeah, so that can work. That can work

49:15 really, really well. I don't know where I was going with this. Oh, yeah, we talked it was,

49:19 it was a thing I wrote about the other day. That's why we were talking about daily tips.

49:22 Yeah, yeah. The daily tips look pretty interesting. Is that free to sign up for?

49:26 Yeah, it's just every morning you get a just a little something in your inbox. I try to keep

49:29 them short because again, ADHD audience, right? But these are your people. These are my people.

49:35 Absolutely. Got it.

49:36 Yeah. One of the other things that comes up a lot too is when you should disclose

49:40 ADHD to it. Like if you think you're going to do that, when in the process should you disclose it?

49:45 So, you know, do you do it during the interview? Right. Is it your employers? Is it their business

49:50 to even know? Yeah. So that's what really important. I had someone ask, do I feel like it's unethical

49:55 to have a neurological condition that could impact your ability to do the work and not tell them? And I feel

50:01 very strongly that it is not in any way a problem to do that because it's none of their damn business.

50:07 Like if you're like, if you legitimately think you're not going to be able to do the work,

50:11 that's a bigger conversation. But if it means that sometimes you're overproductive and sometimes you're

50:15 a little underproductive, it's kind of a wash. I don't have an issue with that. Just the same way

50:19 that I think someone not disclosing that they're pregnant during an interview process, or they have

50:24 cancer during an interview process or any other sort of medical condition that is none of your

50:29 employer's business is totally fine not to disclose. But so for me, my recommendation is that you either

50:38 disclose once you've started the job and you have identified the areas where the current working

50:43 environment creates challenges for you and you need accommodations, or I will sometimes disclose during

50:49 an interview process if I'm really digging the people I'm interviewing with and I feel like we're

50:55 all vibing. So I was once on an interview where I was asked whether my preference is to have regular

51:01 check-ins with my team on works in progress or to go off and build for a few days and then reconnect

51:06 after a few days. Based on everything we've talked about, Michael, I'm sure you're not surprised to hear

51:10 my preference is to ignore everybody for a couple of days and then chat. But I didn't want to seem like a

51:15 jerk who doesn't like my coworkers for saying that. So I was like, oh, I have ADHD. So blah, blah, blah.

51:22 And then I found out the interviewer had ADHD. The other dude on the team we were going to be working

51:26 with had ADHD. The manager had ADHD and they were all the same way. Right. Awesome. We all agree.

51:31 Right. I was I got a job offer like three days later. It was amazing. So I get best case scenario.

51:36 Like you could find that works against you. But yeah, a lot of it is just like a gut vibe thing,

51:41 right? Like there's no right answer here. You can disclose early. You can disclose late.

51:45 You can disclose not at all. You're under no obligation to do so.

51:48 Let's see if we can close up this episode with maybe see if I can get some more mail.

51:51 Scrum, agile, paired programming. None of these things sound appealing to me. And along when

51:59 agile first came out, I thought I was like, that's really interesting. I find that in practice,

52:03 maybe in principle, it sounds cool. In practice for me, it's just it's all distracting. It's all

52:07 friction and stuff. What are your thoughts? I don't want to put words here. I'm talking about

52:11 myself. So how do you feel about these things?

52:13 Yes, I agree. I talked recently or I wrote recently about how standups are just productivity

52:20 killers for me, depending on when they happen and how they work. So my productivity is variable. I have

52:25 days where I will do like eight hours worth of work in four hours and I'll do that twice. So I'll get

52:31 like two or three days worth of work done in a day. I'll have days where I get nothing done.

52:34 Something like a daily standup really plays into this idea that you are like consistently productive

52:40 every day. And if I have two or three days where I have to stand up, say, yeah, I'm still working on

52:45 that thing that probably should have only taken an hour, but I can't make myself do it. I look like a

52:49 jerk. I look like a bad employee. Right?

52:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's setting up to show how you're not like how you failed that.

52:55 Yeah. And then that can create this like self-esteem spiral of like, oh, I'm really bad at this. Everybody

53:01 else is getting all this stuff done. Maybe I don't belong here. Imposter syndrome, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

53:05 Similarly, things like two-week sprints and you know, like a lot of a lot of those rigid processes. I get

53:13 why they exist. I understand that they can work well in certain spaces. I think it's good to have deadlines

53:18 on when things are going to show some meaningful progress. But for the way that I work, I find that

53:25 having those kind of like rigid fixed deadlines creates bad stress for me and doesn't always

53:31 align with when my brain is like, yes, we're going to crank out a ton of work. I personally need a

53:36 little bit more flexibility than those types of systems allow. So it's one of those maybe good for

53:41 other people, not good for me kind of things. Yeah, I don't know. And paired programming,

53:45 how's that fit with people with ADHD? Depends. If I am having a problem with code and I am just

53:53 absolutely stuck. Pair programming on my way through it can be invaluable. Pair programming

53:58 just for the sake of pair programming is a nightmare for me because it makes me feel really self-conscious

54:03 about what I'm doing and how quickly my brain processes information and my like my process.

54:08 I like pair programming with other people who need help as well, like in a mentoring capacity,

54:12 if they're like trying to work through something and they just need someone to kind of like guide them,

54:16 happy to do that. Sure. I feel that feeling a little more like mentoring, you know?

54:20 Yeah. But like just classic, I just generally, like I know some, some organizations are really

54:25 big on you two are going to work on this feature together. Yes. Like that did, that does not work

54:29 for me. I know I've heard people who really love it. They find it very valuable. I'm not trying to take

54:35 away from that. This is not one of those. Like, I think it's bad for everybody. It sucks for me. I

54:39 think it sucks for a lot of folks with ADHD. Yeah. I just can't get in a flow if I'm sitting and working

54:44 with somebody. Yeah. I might be having a good time, but it's, it's really hard to like,

54:47 like reach that like really high level of productivity. So you talked to, let's close

54:52 this out with a bit of a joke. Okay. Maybe, maybe something practical. You talked about the time

54:56 blindness. Estimating is hard. Agile is all about estimates and stuff, you know? So I saw this,

55:03 this pretty cool article I talked about on other podcasts, Python bytes, basically hard to swallow

55:07 a truce. They don't tell you about software engineering, but they have a really great cartoon

55:11 in here that says from monkeyuser.com is actually where it's originally from. And it's trying to

55:16 reimagine how you might estimate. It says for better estimates, instead of like points or hours,

55:22 whatever, we switched to measuring story points too. How many duck sized horses you're willing to fight

55:27 rather than implementing this task? There's no duck you would fight for it. Cause it's so easy. Or

55:32 you'd take on a whole cavalry of like small duck horses. Like, I don't know. What do you think?

55:38 I actually, so I know it's a joke, but I find the stake in the ground comparisons for estimates useful.

55:45 I still don't think I'll always get to an accurate place, but if I say, I don't know how long something's

55:50 going to take. And someone says, well, do you think it would take 20 hours? That gives me like an instant

55:54 grounding of like, Oh, that feels too high. That feels too low or just right. It's still,

55:59 in my opinion, a bit of a wild guess. Like once you start doing the work, you will expose things

56:04 like unknowns that like make, Oh, we thought this, but based on this other thing, it's going to take

56:10 longer or it's going to take way less, or it's going to take about what we thought, but having some sort

56:14 of grounding, whether it's a number of hours or horse sized ducks, you'd be willing to fight.

56:18 I do actually think that's really useful. It's actually kind of interesting. Yeah. And I feel

56:22 there's a human nature, aversion to negativity stronger than a positivity. Right. And this is like,

56:28 how much negativity or how much resistance do you feel to this? Like, I think it's,

56:33 it's a little bit, maybe not idealistic, but it's, I think it goes in the flow of humanity.

56:38 So I think it's, it's a funny one. The one caveat with this is there are tasks that have been on my

56:44 to-do list for ages that realistically would only take 15 to 30 minutes that I will put off for ages.

56:52 Usually they're phone call related. And I hear this a lot from fellow ADHDers, like making phone calls.

56:56 It's just really like, I had make an appointment with a psychiatrist to look into getting ADHD medicine

57:02 on my to-do list for, I am not making this up three years. Michael, this was a 15 minute phone call,

57:08 three years. Cause it's not just the phone call. It's the find a psychologist or psychiatrist. You

57:14 think you're going to hit it off with make the phone call, pick a date to go there, get in the car,

57:19 drive there, do the whole like social awkward introductions thing. Talk about your feelings.

57:24 Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of levels of resistance. Yeah. And the thing that actually got

57:28 me over the hurdle, I found a psychiatrist who has like a, you fill out your information,

57:33 will call you. And that was the thing that did it for me. I don't have to navigate a, right. One of

57:38 these, like press three for this now, seven now enter this, you entered it wrong. Like you did give

57:42 me along. I have to look it up. So the number of like duck sized horses, I'd be willing to fight to

57:46 avoid making a phone call, which is actually a relatively easy task is much higher than the number

57:52 I'd be willing to fight to like implement my own e-commerce platform. You know what I mean? Like,

57:57 I'm going to write my own crypto before I make that phone call. Even though one is objectively way

58:01 more difficult than the other. It estimated it's a reasonable estimate of the total time,

58:06 not the active time. For sure. And so there you go. I think there's something to it. All right,

58:10 Chris, this has been a fun conversation and hopefully helpful for a lot of folks out there.

58:14 Let's wrap it up with a call to action. People want to learn more. What do you tell them? If you want

58:18 to learn more, you think you might have ADHD, you do have ADHD, head over to ADHD for the

58:22 the wind.com/talkpython where you can find a whole bunch of resources, daily newsletter,

58:28 and my contact information. If you just want to ask questions or fight me about Paul Graham.

58:32 Not a fight I want to have. I would say those are all, all those links and all these things will be

58:37 in people's show notes. So just flip over in your podcast player and you can get it right there.

58:42 Chris, thank you for being on the show. It's been insightful.

58:45 Michael, thanks so much for having me. This was truly a pleasure.

58:47 Yeah, thanks. Bye now.

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01:00:00 to our YouTube channel at talkpython.fm/youtube. This is your host, Michael Kennedy. Thanks so much

01:00:06 for listening. I really appreciate it. Now get out there and write some Python code.

01:00:09 I'll see you next time.