I keep lists. Many different list of all sorts of things that need doing. Stuff to do in a text file, tabs in Firefox, post it notes scattered over my desk, lists in my head... So whenever I get bored with what I'm doing, I wander through them all and find something more interesting.
It works reasonably well for most stuff, but I have some hang ups:
1) I'm a relatively fresh-out-of-college programmer, so my job at work is pretty narrowly defined. I pretty much only ever have one task, so it's hard to find diverse things at work to flit to and from as interest dictate. This gets me pretty burnt out on 'programming stuff', which translates to (nearly) always skipping all the cool hacking stuff I have written down in my various notes/lists when I get home. I've yet to find a way around this... :(
2) Some things on my lists get put off a long time. Like I wanted to research some topic that caught my interest after reading an article about it, but figuring out where to start was rather difficult, so I put off starting for about a year.
This gets me pretty burnt out on 'programming stuff'
22 here -- I have a similar programming day-job and nothing works better than a good 1 hour of lifting/running to relax and clear your mind of the last 8-9 hours at work. Usually after my workout I'll spend another hour to cook a good dinner and watch some TV to kick back. I make it a point to shut the door on the past 8 hours and mentally move on.
Working out seems counter intuitive because you think you'll be more tired after a workout (some days it will exhaust you), but once you get a good routine going you feel more energized and rest better during the night, etc.
There seem to be many articles of this sort that are around in various places. Why do they insist on using feel good adjectives in lieu of "you have adhd like behavior, here's what works for me to function well"?
The window dressing makes it had to pay attention to the ideas in these articles :p
The window dressing makes it had to pay attention to the ideas in these articles :p
I think you are only perceiving the "window dressing", because you think the article should be more negative about having ADD or whatever. Why make it negative? "ADHD" sounds like "a disease that needs to be treated". Hyperbrain sounds like "the personality of some very smart and productive people". So there's really no need to use terminology that immediately taints the personality as being negative. (Plus, the target audience will probably get upset and get distracted by something else.)
There is no reason to consider your personality a disease that needs treating, but it is also not bad to learn how to exploit it effectively. That's the point of the article, and the terminology used appeals to the "target market".
Anyway, this is pretty much exactly my personality. I consider myself pretty productive (look at my GitHub page, more than a few projects there), but I am very easily distracted from things I don't want to do. The key is to not let yourself be distracted by stupidity (Reddit was my problem), and instead let yourself be distracted by things that are going to be useful. Other programming tasks, answering people's questions on StackOverflow or mailing lists, etc. If you aren't going to get any work done, at least get something valuable done.
I should really stop reading news.yc, though, because I waste too much time here. (The problem is that pretty much everything I say gets upmodded, which is very addictive. It's nice when people like you, or think you're interesting. But it is still a complete waste of time :)
I relate to the personality type described in this series of articles and I can assure you that I am not afflicted with ADHD or any other related impairment. Although I tend to be disorganized every other symptom of ADHD describes pretty much the opposite of who I am.
Impulsive and hyperactive are the last words that anybody would ever use to describe me.
I'm extremely introverted and tend to listen a lot more than speak. When I do speak, I almost never interrupt anybody except maybe during heated debates.
When I am focused on something I am sensitive to distractions such as noise or people trying to talk to me, but in the absence of external distractions I can stay concentrated and productive for many hours in a row.
The kind of distraction described in this series is not a momentary loss of attention but rather a tendency to divert energy to things other than what I am supposed to be doing.
I'll illustrate with an example:
Perhaps I have been assigned a task at work to investigate a database query which is performing poorly. I have a bad habit of ignoring the easy solutions and spending a lot of time 'distracted' by more interesting details. So I might start reading about b-trees and studying the source code for the database implementation, then maybe I'll decide to take a peek at the IO cache implementation in the Linux kernel, oh this is all weaved through the memory manager. I better learn that too. I think I'm going to need some more books! All this new knowledge about memory management internals is giving me a brilliant new idea for one of dozens of secret pet projects I have. I should implement it right now while the concepts are fresh in my mind! Oh wait, I'm supposed to be fixing that query, right? No problem, this new task will help me nail down what I've learned about Linux memory management and then I'll be able to understand the performance issue better....
It works reasonably well for most stuff, but I have some hang ups:
1) I'm a relatively fresh-out-of-college programmer, so my job at work is pretty narrowly defined. I pretty much only ever have one task, so it's hard to find diverse things at work to flit to and from as interest dictate. This gets me pretty burnt out on 'programming stuff', which translates to (nearly) always skipping all the cool hacking stuff I have written down in my various notes/lists when I get home. I've yet to find a way around this... :(
2) Some things on my lists get put off a long time. Like I wanted to research some topic that caught my interest after reading an article about it, but figuring out where to start was rather difficult, so I put off starting for about a year.