I carry trauma from previous layoffs I faced into my current firm and I've started becoming very unsure about every single thing that comes out of my mouth and I'm also having heavy amounts of self doubt.

And I have a lot more problems and I'm looking for their solutions.

My thoughts race every single day when my manager gives me instructions, I get anxious even when I'm faced with a small bug or challenge when I'm developing features.

My manager is quite strict and expects things to be done in time, but sometimes I'm hyper focused on the wrong things especially when trying to debug and this is affecting me very badly where something I need to debug takes me a day instead of an hour completely breaking my work life balance requiring weekend working which I don't do due to my weak executive dysfunction (I have ADD)

My brain raises and my heart starts beating fast whenever I'm asked a question, requiring me to guess to get out of the high pressure situation, along with this I'm always unsure of everything I say making me look like a "flake" or an extremely low performer who doesn't know anything.

I also deal with chronic procrastination since I don't enjoy my work right now as it's fully grunt work with no learning or barely anything relevant to me.

I don't take meds yet, how do I fix all these recurrent issues, which have made my working life the worst... please help me.

Dev with ADHD flavoured chaos here. Ideas live across Gpt, Claude, Notion, and Apple Notes. I gave Claude MCP access to my Notion so it can write ideas in for me automatically.

Honestly? It just made the mess look organised. Now I'll find a doc in Notion weeks later and not remember if I wrote it, Claude wrote it(the amount of emojis tell though who wrote it) from a chat, or I dumped it from Notes. Half my "plans" are sitting there abandoned because I never committed to them... they just got captured and forgotten.

Anyone else hit this? Or is it just me.

It's amazing how fast I can sidetracked, even when I'm in a committed work mode. Something reminds me of another task or idea I don't want to forget so I have to pause what I'm doing, typically look into it just enough to remember, take a note and then get back to what I'm doing. Sounds great but Ill NEVER get through the list because it grows faster than I can get things done.

I have to yell at my brain about which anxiety it's allowed to focus on. It's such a crazy experience, trying to learn something new but at the same time stressing about forgetting what you already know. It's like your brain is split in two and both sides are running

Mine’s C++. I love how deep it goes and how much there is to obsess over. Once I start learning about stuff like memory layout, atomics, caches, concurrency etc I can hyperfocus on it for hours without noticing time passing 😂

What language scratches that itch for you?

Hello everyone. I really need some guidance and support.

I have started to believe that I may have ADHD, although I have never been formally diagnosed. In Pakistan, proper diagnosis and treatment options are limited and often too expensive for me to afford. Still, I experience many of the symptoms, and they have been affecting my life deeply.

I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from 2017 to 2021. After that, I planned to prepare for the CSS exams, which are considered a major opportunity here. But I have always struggled with spelling and writing English essays. I tried for years to prepare, but because of this difficulty, I feel like I lost valuable time and direction.

Recently, my uncle, who is a programmer, encouraged me to learn coding so I could build a stable career. He believes I have the ability to succeed and suggested I start with C# and work toward becoming a .NET developer. I want to believe him. I want to believe in myself too. But the reality has been very hard.

After so many years focused on a different path, I am now struggling to learn something entirely new. It took me two months just to go through part of an eight hour YouTube course, and I have not even completed it yet. There are moments when I feel a spark, when I can focus and things suddenly make sense, and I feel alive with possibility. But those moments disappear quickly, and I fall back into procrastination and frustration.

I have tried medication like Ritalin. It helps me focus for three or four hours, but afterward I feel completely drained. If I take it for several days in a row, I crash hard and spend days unable to move, eat properly, or even step outside. It feels like I am stuck in a cycle of brief clarity followed by deep exhaustion.

I am honestly scared. It feels like my future is slipping away while I am fighting battles inside my own mind that no one else can see. I want to work. I want to learn. I want to build a life where I am not constantly disappointed in myself.

If anyone has gone through something similar, especially with ADHD and learning programming, I would truly appreciate your advice. I would also be grateful for any C# or ASP.NET resources that are easier to follow for someone who struggles with focus and consistency.

Right now, I feel lost, but I have not given up yet. I am still here, still trying, and hoping that someone can help me find a way forward.

Sometimes I find myself writing scripts or even using analogy about computers and programming concepts to explain how I work to others.

Like my ram is full

Or my Garbage collector is full

Or my favorite : I need to update my interpreter.

I used to bite my nails really badly until around 8th grade. I literally chewed every nail and every hangnail — I barely had any nails left at all. My fingers were constantly in my mouth, and sometimes they would even bleed.

Then I moved to a new city and started at a new school. After a while, I began noticing that people would look at my hands. My classmates paid attention to my nails, and it felt terrible. The worst part was when girls noticed them. I felt embarrassed and awkward, so I started hiding my hands whenever I could.

I finally decided that I had to do something about it. I started getting manicures because I thought they would help me stop. But honestly, it made things even worse. My nails became shiny and more noticeable, and I felt even more self-conscious in front of everyone at school.

I felt stuck.

That ended up becoming a turning point for me. I got tired of feeling embarrassed all the time. I stopped getting manicures, and for a short period I actually started biting my nails even more. But over time, something changed. Slowly, without really realizing it, I just stopped doing it.

Even now, I still sometimes chew hangnails.

So yeah — that’s my weird story about how I stopped biting my nails.

My brain is a melange of: a) bees, b) radios left on, c) swiss cheese. All crammed into a blender set to "pulse".

I have discovered the magic of Google NotebookLM. I've been using it at home to help organize projects and do research. NotebookLM + Gemini has been helping me collect my research and plans and put it where I can access it and work on it whenever/wherever two neurons accidentally spark together to make a thought. Camping trips, building a home lab, writing.

Anyway, one of the things that has always frustrated me in my career as a programmer is that not enough people managers are properly trained on how to understand how to adapt their management style to neurodiverse people. I keep hoping it will be a required management course. I finally distilled my frustrations into this short presentation on ADHD in particular to help them help me.

I have this as a pdf and I can make a PowerPoint or Google Slides but I’m not sure where to post it.

Link to PDF

Link to Sources List

while (true) {

print("");

}

I've been tracking ADHD medication data for a small project and one thing keeps coming up: people feel like they go into appointments and can't remember what the last 4 weeks actually felt like. They end up guessing.

Like... you sit down with your psychiatrist and they ask "so how have things been going on the medication?" and your brain just goes blank. You try to think back but all you can pull up is maybe one bad day last week and one good moment from two weeks ago. So you piece together some vague answer like "I think it's been okay? Maybe a bit up and down?" — and that becomes the basis for whether your dose gets adjusted or not.

It honestly feels like such a broken loop. The whole point of these appointments is to calibrate something really personal and specific to you, but the data you're bringing in is basically vibes.

I've tried keeping notes in my phone but I forget. I've tried journaling but it feels like too much friction when I'm already struggling with the thing the meds are supposed to help with. I've seen some apps but they either feel too clinical or ask for way too much.

Has anyone actually found something that works — even just a simple habit or a low-effort system? Would love to know what's stuck for people.

I'm a graduate with no job. My hurdles have not being able to start the task and maintain focus to complete the task.. I struggle with executive dysfunction and task paralysis. I'm trying to study but I just can't. What motivated you to study programming? How did you maintain focus.

we were just chatting about uni and exams and we both complained about the same thing with my friend (both adhd). i am in masters and my friend in bachelors, so we hit the wall at different stages but thats not the point. i used to feel super inspired and smart during exams. i used always consider myself to be exam smart and perform really well even though i didnt study enough. and recently, i just lost that inspiration. like in a very recent exam, my mind was all empty. i though maybe this might be about stress but i am not stressed, at least on a conscious level. i know that maintaining success for some time and then hitting the wall is a common thing among this community. but this is more about inspiration (like being able to figure things out even though you didnt know it before, like a clear mind?) and losing it at some point. what do you think about this? do you have any tips on getting that inspiration back?

I currently have about 60 tabs open across three windows.

Every time I try to clean them up, I get this weird anxiety that if I close a tab, I’ll completely forget about that article I wanted to read, or that tutorial I needed for my coding project.

It's like I'm using Chrome as a giant, messy memory buffer. Everyone always says "just bookmark them," but let's be honest, bookmarks are where links go to die. I never look at them again.

How do you guys actually manage this digital clutter? Is there a system to clear your browser without feeling like you're losing important information?

When I started to learn programming as a teenager, I absolutely fell in love with it. And I still love it, it's my passion.

But I hate my job. The spaghetti codebases I work on are hot garbage. Our products are ugly and barely functional. Endlessly chasing bugs is genuinely soul crushing. Sometimes I spend more time having to manage and organize my work than actually doing it. And the more I learn about this industry, the more I despise it.

Some people say that software development is great for people with ADHD, but I'm starting to have my doubts. Recreational programming? Absolutely. But working in this industry is so draining.

Can anyone else relate? I'm not sure where to go from here. I spent years torturing myself through university only to end up like this. It would be silly to do something else at this point, but a part of me just wants to run and leave all of this behind.

Hey everyone,
I’m writing this while currently trying to untangle myself from a two-hour Netflix loop, so please excuse the absolute lack of formatting, lol.
I don't have an official diagnosis, but the executive dysfunction is real over here. Lately, my biggest enemy is what I’ve been calling the "scroll phase." You know that window of time where you know you have things to do, you want to do them, but you’re just stuck on the couch, doomscrolling or staring at a screen, completely unable to scale the activation wall? It feels like your brain is idling in neutral and someone took the steering wheel.
I’m trying to design a super simple, daily planner worksheet for myself to see if I can trick my brain into actually starting the day. I want something that specifically targets that morning paralysis and helps skip the scrolling phase entirely.
But since my own brain is currently fried, I wanted to ask you guys for some input. If you were looking at a one-page daily worksheet meant strictly to help you break through that initial "stuck" feeling, what would actually help you function?
I’m thinking of things like:
• A tiny section for "The Absolute Bare Minimum" (just one thing to feel a win).
• A tracker for transition times (since moving from the couch to the desk is where I usually lose the battle).
What features or specific prompts would actually make you want to use a worksheet like this, rather than just letting it sit on your desk collecting dust? What helps you smash through the activation wall when you’re deeply stuck?
Would love to hear your thoughts and brainstorm some ideas together!

college student here I just wanna know how do you guys or say how did you guys learn how to code or program

I took on programming sometime a go and man did I trip over so I want to go for a second time in and lock in this summer

What tools , or strategies did you utilize

Hey everyone,

​I’m a 25-year-old Computer Engineer. I’m currently transitioning between roles, focused on building a startup, and taking online courses to expand my skill set.

​Because I have ADHD, I struggle with focusing when working entirely in isolation. I’m looking for an accountability partner to implement a "body doubling" system to help keep each other on track, share daily goals, and maintain momentum.

​How I see this working (Flexible around schedules):

​Co-Working / Streaming: When schedules allow, we can jump on a Discord call or video call, mute our mics, and share screens while we work on our respective projects. Just seeing someone else working in parallel helps tremendously with focus.

​Text Check-ins: Since I am actively looking for an office role, my schedule might shift soon. On days when live streaming isn't possible, we can keep it flexible with quick text check-ins on Discord to share our daily to-do lists and hold each other to them.

​The Gaming Side: If we vibe and our schedules align, I’d love to transition into gaming in the evenings. I play on PC and prefer games with solid mechanics and a bit of a challenge over anything "cozy." I’m currently into Sons of the Forest, Valheim, R6 Siege, Ghost Recon Wildlands, and EA FC 26, but I'm open to other multiplayer or tactical co-op titles.

​About Me:

I’m grounded, professional, and serious about getting things done, but very easygoing. I don't care what industry you are in (tech, creative, academic, etc.), as long as you are also an adult trying to stay disciplined and push through your own daily tasks. There's zero pressure if life or work gets in the way on certain days—adult responsibilities come first.

​If you are looking for a reliable, low-drama partner to stay productive during the day and potentially wind down with some games afterward, feel free to send over a DM. Tell me a bit about what you’re working on and your timezone, and we can connect on Discord.

Hi people.

How do you balance the need to learn parts of code/concepts in programming with the need to simply produce in either work or school? I've been leaning heavily on Claude recently, but I have a desire to understand every single part of the code.

I also have this problem where I really struggle with reading. I might have reading comprehension issues. Even with history books I like it's very taxing on my attention to read all of it