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A casual community for people with ADHD
Values:
Acceptance, Openness, Understanding, Equality, Reciprocity.
Rules:
- No abusive, derogatory, or offensive post/comments.
- No porn, gore, spam, or advertisements allowed.
- Do not request for donations.
- Do not link to other social media or paywalled content.
- Do not gatekeep or diagnose.
- Mark NSFW content accordingly.
- No racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, or ageism.
- Respectful venting, including dealing with oppressive neurotypical culture, is okay.
- Discussing other neurological problems like autism, anxiety, ptsd, and brain injury are allowed.
- Discussions regarding medication are allowed as long as you are describing your own situation and not telling others what to do (only qualified medical practitioners can prescribe medication).
Encouraged:
- Funny memes.
- Welcoming and accepting attitudes.
- Questions on confusing situations.
- Seeking and sharing support.
- Engagement in our values.
Relevant Lemmy communities:
lemmy.world/c/adhd will happily promote other ND communities as long as said communities demonstrate that they share our values.
- 1 user online
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- 103 users / week
- 305 users / month
- 1.01K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 673 Posts
- 10.4K Comments
- Modlog
ADHD, great for exploring, hunting and making it back home. Not so great for cubicle work…
I’ve made it work surprisingly well in software development - I work in the architecture field and as long as I’m truly diligent about note taking (or am lucky enough to have a trusted coworker to lean on) I’m able to make it work.
Also, micromanagers are your fucking bane if you have ADHD - sometimes I’m not working, I accept that and do house shit when I can’t focus… I still produce more output than most of my coworkers but I absolutely do need full brain breaks.
I will never return to office. I’ll manage a Wendy’s first.
It seems we’ve been taught strict expectations about “functioning.” When a machine doesn’t get the resources it needs to do its function, it does not function, and it is not expected to function, if the mechanics are understood. We know a lot about what people need (still more to discover) but we’re expected to “function” without having our needs met.
I need you to email this to my director at work immediately
But what can you actually DO?
Anything that is more about talking to different parties rather than documenting and being the one to deliver. the more specialised people the better you connect, the bwtter. They will love your ability to see the patterns of the work place, your helicopter perspective. That will help them to test their ideas, to understand the concepts and what their task is all about. They will also love that you will not micro manage (as long as you dont end up hyperfocusing on their topic) and let them do their thing.
Don’t be the specialist. Don’t be the one that tries to have an eye on all the details, all the numbers. I tried to be an accountant for a while…
Ooh this is good. Yes I can see my ability to absorb wikipedia coming in useful here.
How do you think I should prepare myself for a role like this qualification-wise? I’m interested in STEM but the thought of picking one niche (say, chemical engineering) and devoting myself to it really hurts.
Also I can see this being useful in startups, right?
Try starting with not blaming muslims for all of your problems
I didn’t
https://feddit.nl/comment/12161796
There are so many more comments you made about muslims and inhumanised gazans but I’m not sharing each of them cause I just noticed your account is a day old. So yeah don’t reply to me troll.
I was gonna ask this too. I’ve heard that some employers in the UK (perhaps in the Netherlands too) are actually explicitly asking for ND people in their job listings.
yeah. Turns out the economy is fake. who knew?
I know you’re (at least partially) joking but wtf are you talking about?
Which comment are you referring to?
Yours, about the economy being fake.
Hmmm. Idk. on my screen it looks like some comments have vanished and i can’t remember what was there. maybe an overzealous mod?
Nothing has been removed
I heard (but haven’t actually checked because squirrel) GCHQ in the UK were actively recruiting ND people.
They always have done this, even before there was a wider understanding / acceptance of neurodiversity (e.g. at Bletchley Park)
What’s GCHQ?
Govt Communications Headquarters. One of the branches of military intelligence in the UK.
Yeah, this is the example I heard too
One girl at the same time.
I struggled with this most of my life without knowing why, always feeling like I never measured up. Since being diagnosed and treated at 47 it made a huge difference. I set reasonable boundaries at work and I’m blessed with a sympathetic manager. He gives me tasks that allow me to play to my strengths and make a positive difference in the workplace.
My Director likes to just write me up rather than to actually “lead.” Any chance your manager is hiring?
Are there things we can do to take advantage of this? Even on my meds I struggle to write my documentation, but the initial period of trying to find a solution and making a working POC is so great
I use copilot to draft all my initial copy. It’s FAR too time consuming for me to try to produce original copy myself. Once I have the copilot results though, then I can analyze and optimize from there. That said, I fucking hate writing documentation and I procrastinate too much.
I use chatgpt for most of my non technical copy. It didn’t a decent job on my resume too, though it lied… A lot. So had to clean it up
Spend weeks automating your documentation
You will surely not regret spending that much time on something that probably wont be used
Assign it as a research collection task to a junior dev and forget to follow up.
(Fr tho, auto doc frameworks and related instrumentation are easily worth weeks. I will fight your manager.)
I am generating markdown tables with a Json file and a GitHub action that builds a markdown table for me lol I just learned today that I have to upskill on QA more and lead some organizational change. Reading tense technical manuals on testing is my nightmare
I cannot read this sentence. I have tried 3 times but nothing is reaching my brain.
It’s definitely too long of a sentence just to say ‘ADHD is a superpower and society is bad.’
Me nodding in somber agreement. And yet, at the same time, also reaching for the trap-door lever. you tried and that’s what matters.
Maybe it’s time to put on some tunes and take a brain break.
ITT:
“it’s not a superpower! i cant even do a boring and monotonous task!”
and
“I love that I found a place where I’m able to utilize the benefits of the way that my brain functions!”
🤔
It’s a super power in the same way that being able to mentally move yourself while not being affected by gravity is a super power. In specific circumstances it’s awesome. The rest of the time you’re just trying to not float away.
To put a finer point on it: OG Quicksilver (don’t even get me started on the historic Marvel v DC handjobbery) ended up so “super powered” that his inborn celerity transcended the very laws of physics — having little to no frictional effect on the reality he was moving through. Thus, much like Jean Grey, Magneto, Legion, and a few others, his powers were not only beyond “super”, but recognized as equal parts boon and curse to the entire species. Thanks, 90s.
You mean my heat vision is not appropriate in all situations?!
Don’t post that publicly! We’re getting to convince the normies we don’t have super powers. Although I must say I do enjoy this invisibility thing.
This swerves way into “ADHD is a superpower” territory which is bullshit.
edit: For example, while I have a lot of these traits, I also can’t remember to put a new trash bag in the trash bin when I take the full bag out to the garage, which is a 1 minute task. Despite reminding myself AS I’m removing the full bag. Twice a week. For years now. Because I will see something in the garage or think of something while doing the mundane task that completely derails my train of thought.
The simplehuman line of trash cans has a step that keeps the internal trash can liner out of the trash can so you can easily see that you didn’t replace the bag. It’s very helpful for this.
Not saying this will work for you, but I’ve had some success with convincing my self conscious to do things without me thinking. Then I can shut down the thinking part of my brain for periods of time in between tasks. I’ve done this through meditation since I was a kid. It has helped me to “just know” what needs to be done and I do it.
I do similar things when a task has two physically separate locations like taking out the trash.
While walking out with the trash I will repeat constantly “put in new bag” all the way to the garbage and all the way back, otherwise the task doesn’t get completed.
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t done the same thing. “New bag new bag new bag new ba… hey why did I leave that camp chair over there. Man I miss camping. Well trash is done, back to the computer!”
I put a new bag in before I leave the room to avoid that. Not ADHD just a terrible memory. Bag is in plain sight so it’s hard to forget the task between steps.
Implying you can control or induce these hyperfixations in a productive way is disingenuous at best, measurably harmful at worst.
If you work in a job that can use use the chaos in a productive way that’s great, but I’m willing to bet you still face abnormally high difficulty with general life tasks, and consistently struggle to enforce a work/life balance.
You’re not helping people with ADHD by posting this. You’re establishing an unattainable standard for people that are already doing everything in their power just to get by.
Right, not once have I fixated on something by choice.
You think I want to be googling and playing pokemon go at work home and in bed for the past 3 weeks despite only playing it for a week 8 years ago?
Just once I want the fixation on house work or something like the gym
It’s also pretty cringe “mom says I’m a genius” shit
Every parent should be gassing their kid up though. Most of our “successful” people are just normal kids that never hit a wall or had help getting around walls. Realistic expectations are what keeps people from jumping jobs for a raise; applying for positions they don’t fully qualify for; moving for better job market access; retraining for management roles; and so much more.
Note, I’m not talking about rags to riches, success can be a first generation college graduate getting a professional job; a homeless kid getting a steady job and pulling their family off the streets; a burnt out delivery guy getting a union warehouse job. The point is people with low expectations don’t look for new opportunities.
It’s so weird that we have a culture that treats teaching pride to children as a bad thing.
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/why-reactionaries-hate-pride-and-narcissists-938d39261f13
What a weird thing to call pride and narcissism the same. Being prideful is nothing to do with being narcissistic. One is an external thing, the other an internal. The prideful person cares about things other than themselves and shows that. The narcissistic person cares about no one but themselves, and their actions reflect that.
This comment deserves increased visibility
That’s not true at all. I have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I care about others very deeply. And My actions reflect that. For example, recently I shut down a cult discord server run by a pedophile who’s dating kids from the cult. This is because I think adults dating kids is bad.
Oh that’s just for normal kids. Like half of what a private school does is teach kids to have pride and confidence. The other half is introduce them to a network of wealthy people so they can get a VP job after their dirt easy business degree that also teaches them they’re now experts in becoming experts at whatever their team does
Which is why they’re so insufferable and why they think they can micromanage someone who’s bringing literal decades of experience and learning to a situation.
As to why conservatives go so hard on it? It’s their ideology. If they thought the Walmart greeters had any intrinsic worth then they would feel bad about how they treat them. So nobody’s special until they’ve proven themselves and that just happens to coincide with going to private school where they tell the kids they earned their spot because they did an interview and wrote an essay.
I am so fucked up in part because I was taught that pride is the root of all evil and that it’s better to be humble.
I struggle to accept compliments, I struggle to not be intensely critical of myself, and I feel like I have very little drive for just about any form of competition.
I felt like you my whole life. All that shame, embarrassment and guilt. I literally assumed it was just because I was in fact a shitty human.
Then I read this: https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-and-adhd/amp/
Holy shit. What a revelation. I told my psychiatrist about this and sent him the article. He prescribed Clonidine. Clonidine is amazing! It got rid of all that shame and allowed me to realize that I do not suck, that everyone does not hate me, and that those horrible emotions were basically fictions created by my shitty brain chemistry.
I agree to an extent, but also that the parents need to take time to understand how to “gas them up” appropriately. It’s not everyone’s case, but it became very apparent to me when I was young that my parents would cheer me on over anything, and never take any time to learn about the things they were cheering me on over, and that led to disbelieving pretty much any positive feedback from anyone long-term. The only feedback of substance growing up was the very rare negative feedback, because they would only pull it out when they understood it enough to know it needed improving. That, and emphasizing their efforts as the thing to cheer on, not just the end results.
I’ve learned to work through that, and maybe it goes without saying for most people, but being a genuine and substantive cheerleader is important.
Yep, kids idolize their parents. So disinterest is devastating.
Thank you. That’s exactly right.
There are so many, countless disadvantages people with ADHD suffer from. And this post just suggests they’re hidden geniuses with no problems at al…
50% done work kills team productivity. Having to micro manage sucks for everyone involved.
These are challenges that must be addressed in most roles.
If anybody here is an engineer, I’d highly recommend applying for jobs at tech startups. It’s very chaotic and disorganized; you’ll be constantly putting out fires. But you know where you’re at when you’re putting out fires? Flow state.
The problem is that they are horrifically toxic places.
This went from engaging to utter burnout and misery very quickly for me.
It’s so true, but i also get tired and burn out fast
Hell of a caveat there.
It means I’m definitely good at sex.
Thinking about it, a manager who knows how to trick adhd workers to hyper focus on stuff could make a killer department 🤔
In my experience all it takes is a reasonable manager who can make progressive goals that are easily achievable which help build and develop a person while getting them engaged and acknowledging their hard work at each stage. It’s much easier than tricking i feel
Someone close to me has struggled forever with ADHD. A heroic effort got her through med school. They are an ER doc. Their life outside the ER would not work at all without an amazing partner, but at work, it’s kind of perfect. Fix it, it goes away. Everything is different all the time. Fix shiny thing, send it home, find next shiny thing.
It is a very unique situation though.
If more workplaces incorporated performance based snacks it wouldn’t be!
Sure, if you want an even greater obesity epidemic.
Burn it off pacing around the office.
Cucumbers are a good snack. And peanut butter celery, but that takes more work than just throwing a cucumber in the fridge.
This description sounds extremely hirable. I’ll take 5 please.
You can have 4, they’ll do the work of 7. But the 5th hire has to be a maid/cook.
We need to start a company
Where are these high functioning ADHD people? The adhd person I know I’m my life can’t really get things done in a reliable way.
Once I got Adderall, this became me. I was astounded
Hello it’s me, high functioning non medicated adhd (or some form of) person.
I do extremely well in my tech-centric job because of exactly what the post is talking about. I do fall short on longer term projects (forget about them until last minute) but most of my job is more in the moment, which works well for me and my skillset.
Edit: I guess that’s ultimately the thing right, it’s possible for the work or job to fit with an ADHD mind, but many jobs do not.
Imagine being a Financial Auditor / Accountant with ADHD.
I’m willing to bet they don’t exist.
I do work with numbers a fair bit, excel helps a lot with keeping it all organized… ish
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Just thinking about that makes my dopamine receptors shrivel up.
I can tell you that it’s it’s very difficult when operating within a stable, established framework.
But working on a revamp / redevelopment of a system or solving novel problems definitely engages the gears.
I did alright for a while. Changing up clients worked when I started to get bored.
It’s not going so great now. Considering a career change but also not wanting to throw away years of experience and a professional license. But yeah, I’m at “this is all bullshit and I don’t wanna”.
Also work in finance and feel similarly, I oddly would feel really bad about leaving though, I have a wealth of intimate knowledge of how our systems work and answers for oddball questions no one else at my level at least would know, so… I feel guilty even wanting to leave. I know it’s not good but… Can’t help it lol
Right here with you after seven years at this company Not finance but still
It’s an interesting juxtaposition. I did politics and governance in Afghanistan and was extremely knowledgeable about it. But remembering to shave every morning was hard. I’d come back from lunch and my sergeant would be like, “great work, now when’s the last time you washed your coffee cup? Did you remember to empty your desk trash last night?”
To be fair, I also have a TBI and nobody’s sure how much of this is TBI and how much is ADHD.
Me. Am engineer. Make great money essentially being empowered to ask why the work people are doing exists. Not necessarily to automate it either. Lot of what I do these days is process simplification. Turns out having someone who thinks meanial tasks are bullshit is a fantastic skill in my field.
Those traits gave me two things in my IT contracting career, the ability to roll into a new position at the same contractor so I didn’t have to job hunt, and the contractor wanting nothing to do with bringing me in as a full time employee. I saw it as a win/win