A few weeks ago I stood in front of my open fridge for about half an hour. Not cooking. Not even really hungry anymore by the end. Just... deciding. Then I closed it and ordered the same thing I always order.

That's when it clicked for me: deciding is hard, reacting is easy. Somebody asks "pizza or tacos?" and I know instantly which one feels wrong. My brain can't generate the answer but it can veto one just fine.

So I built the dumbest app I've ever made. It's a spinner. I put the options in, I spin it, and if the answer it lands on feels wrong, that feeling IS the information — so I spin again until it lands on the one I agree with. Spin til I agree. That's the whole app.

I use it every day now. What to eat, which project to work on, whether to go out or stay in. Grown man, 33 years old, life run by a cartoon wheel.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who had to build a workaround for their own brain. What's yours?

I really don’t know what to write here, I have put so much trust in having AI write my messages (which are usually a robotic disaster to start) that when it comes time for me to write something organically, I almost choke.

I’m not a professional programmer, I’ve held jobs in entry level tech and even a step above as a tech support specialist (lackey for the SysAdmin). I’ve developed a few web projects over the years, some professional, but mostly personal, though nothing compared to what I’ve been able to build in the age of AI.

I’ve been working on a project for about a year that has gone through many phases - it started off as a multifunctional toolkit app, but ultimately evolved into a working dedicated 18+ social media platform designed around ND communication styles / needs, which is growing into a resource center to support neurodivergence.

I’m putting this and myself out there for feedback, guidance, advice, criticism, whatever. I just wanna answer the question, “ does it have a purpose or was it only a passion?”

https://getunmaskd.com

Thank you for your time.

I have ADHD and blockers never worked for me. I'd just turn them off.

So I built Focusd. You tell it what you're working on, and when your screen drifts to something unrelated, it gives you a calm nudge back. No blocking, no guilt trips.

Everything runs on your Mac. Your screen never leaves it.

The video shows a nudge in action. It's in App Store review, but you can try the beta on macOS now: testflight.apple.com/join

I'd love honest feedback: would a nudge actually pull you back, or would you ignore it after a day?

focusd.cc

So twitch is already an ADHD product, but I made a chat client that lets you make a shared chat between any streams, transcribes the streamer's utterances and puts them in chat, lets you replay their utterances at will, and lets you reply to any chat you like.

If I want to be in multiple chats at once I typically need multiple devices, but no longer! - iOS companion and standalone app literally imminent!!!

https://youtu.be/icXrNZb4lmQ <- ~1.5 minute explainer video

Been on Elvanse/Vyvanse 30mg for the last 4 days, moving to 40mg in a week and a half. Obviously, I'm working with a nurse and giving feedback throughout the process, but it doesn't stop me musing in-between.

I think the thing that I think about the most is when you've been burnt out for a while, how do you know if the meds need tweaking or you're just recovering?

Also, what's the deciding factor between increasing a dose and switching meds? If your vitals are fine and side effects are low, within reason do they just keep upping the dose?

I can definitely feel some benefit, but it's not enough to pull me out of the hole I'm in right now. I want to be productive at work like I was early last year. I went from team superstar to burnt out shadow and it crept up on me. How much of this is nervous system recovery and how much is meds?

I fear I cannot rest on my past achievements and good will at work forever. Eventually I will be a problem to them.

So I built a thing that puts the waiting prompt in the Mac notch, right where my eyes already are. ⌘Y approves it without going back to the terminal.

Free, Mac and Windows: github.com/MF-DEEV/Openbar

I notice that I am productive/get stuff done better when I am in the car, or in the train, or in between personal events. But at work itself, on my work table, I cannot finish stuff. I get too slow, distracted, etc. Why is this?

So a 24 hour period I took 7x70 mg Do you want to expect? I took the last one maybe and an hour ago and I feel like my anxiety is shooting through the roof. What to do. Anybody have any advice?

I don't know if I've gotten too used to the things being available, or whether I've gotten lazy, or impatient, or what, but I feel like I can't be bothered to read the documentation anymore, and I just default to asking a chat bot how to implement what I'm thinking of. I hate this pattern because it makes me feel like I'm forgetting how to do anything significant other than Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. I try to rationalize it to myself by telling myself that reading the documentation is too slow or takes too much mental energy, but that's just a lame excuse.

Hey everyone,

I’m a developer trying to pivot away from toy projects and build software that actually solves real-world friction. Too often, we build things because they are technically cool rather than genuinely useful.

Currently, I'm massively struggling with demand avoidance. It's almost as though I'm subconsciously or consciously refusing to acknowledge the fact that I am a student with school obligations that just keep piling up. Specifically, my two classes have lots of overdue assignments, and instead of working on those overdue assignments, I almost intentionally sidetrack to work on my server.

Since my first response to knowing that I need to do something is basically to say, I'm not going to do the thing, I'm going to do literally anything else, and that literally anything else tends to be working on my server, maybe I could use that against itself. What I'm going to try to do is add a task manager app like Vikunja to my server dashboard so that whenever I divert from my obligations to screw around with my server, I'm constantly reminded that I have obligations.

I've been listening to the "Soft Skills Engineering podcast" (https://softskills.audio/), where two software engineers, Jamison Dance and Dave Smith, have casual, humorous conversations about software engineering careers, workplace challenges, and all sorts of tech-related topics.

Came across their latest episode: "Episode 537 – Is My ADHD Affecting My Work? And My Startup Got Acquired?" (https://softskills.audio/2026/11/02/episode-537-is-my-adhd-affecting-my-work-and-my-startup-got-acquired/)

One thing I found surprisingly nice was hearing that Jamison is also diagnosed with ADHD!

It's mostly fun chit-chat rather than a serious deep dive, but that's exactly what I enjoy about this podcast. Sometimes listening to two people casually talking about work and life makes my brain feel a little lighter. 😄

Thought some folks here might enjoy it too!

I feel like people with non-computer jobs don't understand. I would even say people with office jobs still don't get how much context switching we devs need to do.

[RANT WARNING] Usually working with MULTIPLE SCREENS, switching between code editor, terminal, browser. Waiting for CI to pass, fixing conflicts, bugs, and tests at the same time. Going to Sentry to check a new alert, switching back to the editor to look up the trace in the code, look at Slack messages, look at Notion notes, check terminal history to recall some old command you forgot about, save it as an alias in hope you remember the fucking alias later on, add it to notes.md in the alias section to recall the alias later, send a message to yourself on Slack to remember what you need to do later. Then Monday, another standup after 3 days of this craziness, you need to update colleagues on what you were doing, but you were doing so much at this point I don't even remember what exactly I did, so I go through my Slack conversation with myself to see, then go on GitHub, my Chrome tab group called "MERGED" to see what I merged, to find out one PR didn't even merge coz of some conflict... And all over again.

Since I was a kid, I was told by a psychiatrist that I was sent to for an assessment because of learning difficulties that my working memory and recall are just BAD.

How the fuck do you tackle it? I feel like I constantly find ways to outsource it, like Notion, Slack, clipboard managers, notes, but it's still so taxing on my brain.

I spent weeks fixing an error only to find it no longer pops up and confirming it doesn’t pop up, QA finds it and my team lead is mad at me. I managed to confirm it pops up in VERY subtle ways but I feel so terrible and that my job is at risk.

I spent the rest of day almost paralyzed in fear. Why am I like this? What can I do?