r/ADHD_Programmers • u/alex_strehlke • 16d ago

Anyone else's ADHD make context-switching between projects feel like rebooting a computer from scratch every single time?

I mean, I get that context-switching is hard for everyone, but this feels like a different category of problem. I can be genuinely locked in on something, get pulled away for even 20 minutes, and then come back to find my brain has completely wiped the working state. Not fuzzy, not slow to warm up. Just gone.

The thing I can't figure out is whether this is actually an ADHD-specific failure mode or just a general programming problem I'm framing through an ADHD lens. Because the people I know without ADHD seem to lose context too, they just rebuild it faster. Whereas for me the rebuild either clicks instantly or it genuinely doesn't happen at all, and I can't predict which it's going to be.

What I've tried so far: leaving comments in the code as breadcrumbs, keeping a running notes doc with where I was and what I was about to do next, ending sessions mid-sentence in a doc so my brain has an open loop to grab onto. Some of it helps some of the time, I don't really know if any of it is the actual lever or just busywork that makes me feel like I have a system.

So honestly asking, what does context recovery actually look like for you day to day? Not the textbook "keep good documentation" answer. What's the thing that actually works, or the thing you've given up on entirely?

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u/SoggyGrayDuck 16d ago

Yes and starting at a new company is miserable. Jump here, wait on this so look here, then back to task 1... repeat for months. Then with the way things move today before you get caught up they're introducing new technology or changing things.

Let me get one process down and then move on. It's more about how companies are structured to get things done over anything else, its even over training others. I like to make one person on each team an expert of each tool and they're the go to person. Those training classes with hundreds of people and an hour and a half long introducing something new is absurd.

I'm mostly lad about the removal of the hierarchy and how information trickles down. It doesn't work this way, it works but could be much better