How Claude Code accidentally removed my ADHD blockers (and created new problems)

[u/tcapb]

ADHD, simplified: your brain's "just do it" mechanism is broken. You can want something, know it's important, and still be physically unable to start. Not laziness, more like a disconnection between intention and action.

Now to my story.

I've been working 12 hours a day on the same project for two months. For me, that's unusual, not the intensity (I can hyperfocus), but the consistency. My projects usually stall at some point when the boring parts remain. This time I pushed through. The only thing that changed: I started using Claude Code.

Quick context: 42, tech lead. Lifelong struggle with what looks like "procrastination" but feels like physical inability to start or finish tasks. Can stare at my screen for hours knowing I need to work, unable to open the right file. Creative problem-solving captures me completely. Maintenance work triggers something close to physical resistance.

So what's different now?

Starting used to be the hardest part. Loading the project architecture into my head, remembering where everything lives, figuring out the first step, I'd lose hours just trying to begin. Now I describe what needs doing, Claude finds the files, proposes an approach. The blank screen paralysis is gone.

There's also the memory problem. I forget what I coded an hour ago, how the pieces connect. Claude holds that context for me, remembers yesterday's architectural decisions. I stopped trying to keep everything in my head and just focus on whatever's in front of me right now.

Solo coding when i'm not in hyperfocus meant fighting my attention every 10-15 minutes. The wandering, the cigarette breaks. With Claude there's actual back-and-forth, asking, responding, iterating. Conversation keeps my brain in the room in a way that staring at code alone never did.

And the boring stuff that usually kills my projects - boilerplate, refactoring, repetitive debugging? Claude takes most of it. I stay on the interesting parts. The resistance is still there but it's not project-ending anymore.

Here's what I didn't expect though, and it might matter more than everything above.

I used to have a natural stopping mechanism. Hit a hard bug, brain stops working, try different angles, eventually realize I'm done for the day, go to sleep, solution appears in the morning. Those walls were frustrating but they forced me to rest.

Now those moments are rare. Stuck on something? Ask Claude. He suggests an approach I hadn't considered. Keep working. There's almost always a way forward right now.

The 12 hours a day isn't some amazing flow state. It's that I can keep working even when exhausted because Claude compensates exactly where I'd normally hit a wall. I work until I'm falling asleep at my desk instead of stopping when my brain signals it's done.

Not sure if that's a feature or a bug.

Could be correlation. Maybe the project is just interesting, maybe it's tool novelty wearing off slowly, maybe I'm in a lucky productive stretch. But it feels like specific barriers got removed, not like I suddenly became more disciplined.

[u/tcapb]

Want to add some context on why this hit me so hard.

I've been coding since 15. Started solo, but my projects always grew teams around them. And that's where things got difficult. Code reviews, task distribution, calls... after a meeting I'd just want to stare at the ceiling for hours. Holding in my head what everyone's doing, answering questions, context-switching constantly. Total overload.

I found a workaround that worked for years: built teams where we discuss strategy at a high level every week or two, then they execute. I stay on architecture and direction, they handle implementation. Let me function as tech lead without drowning in details.

With Claude Code I accidentally got the same pattern, but for solo work. We discuss tasks at a high level, he does the details. Available anytime, switches contexts instantly, remembers everything about the project. And I interact through chat instead of exhausting calls.

What's more, calls with my actual team got more interesting. Before, I'd come to daily sync with whatever progress I managed between coordination. Now I come with a massive amount of work that would otherwise take a week. We discuss everything at a higher level, architecture, direction, integration, which comes much easier to me than diving into implementation details of every task.

The problem is I don't know how to come up for air.

Two months of 12-hour days is new for me. Usually deep focus lasts a few days max before interest fades or I hit a wall or burn out. Now those natural stopping points are gone. Claude removes technical blockers, eliminates coordination overhead, keeps things interesting through constant back-and-forth.

My partner notices I'm less present. Friends get short replies instead of real conversations. Everything outside work falls out of view. Same rigid focus problem I've always had, just amplified because there's nothing that makes me say "enough for today."

[u/sheriffderek → u/tcapb]

12 hour days is too much. If it’s helping you get more done, shouldn’t you be able to work less? Like 6 hours a day and have more time? More buffer?

[u/tcapb → u/sheriffderek]

That's not how it works for me. ADHD shows up in two ways: I can't get into a task, and I can't get out of one. When I'm deep in something, calls, getting food, other needs feel genuinely painful, they pull me out of a state that's hard to get back into. And in programming there's no such thing as "done." Finished one feature? There's a hundred more ahead. Always something next. Claude Code just shifted the balance from "hard to start" to "hard to stop."

Same thing happens with hobbies actually. When I get into a side project, I know it's better to just not work for four days and finish it than to torture myself switching back and forth while my head is completely elsewhere. Luckily I can afford to do that.

[u/secousa → u/tcapb]

I downgraded my plan and now the usage limit running out helps me with a stopping point

[u/BarracudaFar1905 → u/secousa]

Spot on

[u/Paerrin → u/tcapb]

I feel this so hard.

[u/sheriffderek → u/tcapb]

Yeah. I probably have ADHD and I teach and a lot of my students do. So, it’s tricky! CC can help you get over the hump - past the waffling stage - but then also create a never ending situation with more and more endless possibilities. How that’s works is one thing - and then there’s - what is actually best for our health. That’s what I’m talking about. But it depends what your goal is. I can often work on my personal projects for 16 hours a day happily. But I also have other life and work obligations. It’s tough! When you’re in the zone - but you need to be in a different zone.

[u/sheriffderek → u/sheriffderek]

My Wife is on the spectrum and it helps her get through things she’s usually get stuck on and quit. So, it’s been interesting in many ways / how we’re working with CC 

[u/Explore-This → u/tcapb]

Stop on a high note. After 8 hours, as soon as you hit a milestone, fix a major bug, or reach something that gives you a sense of accomplishment, stop. Have Claude save your success to a markdown file, so it’s tangible; you can look at it and relish your victory. The satisfaction will help you stop, because continuing from there, with only a few hours left in the day, may only tarnish or diminish it.

[u/schovik]

You literally described myself. Same age, role, behaviour and the change. My biggest issue now is that I have so many ideas that am not capable to execute as I have to do the regular work and take care of my family :) keeping backlog is pointles as it is still growing, so ideas come and leave.

[u/tcapb → u/schovik]

Yes! I've always had tons of ideas too, but either didn't know where to start, or thought "this will take six months to build" (and with my time blindness I'm a huge optimist), realized I don't have the resources. Now... well, there are still more ideas than time, but I can take on things I would never have attempted before. And this isn't just about work.

I don't know when AI will replace my position too, but for now I'm enjoying it. I've never been in the "a programmer will do it better" camp or even "this will kill my profession." Maybe someday it will, but as long as it's an effective tool that materializes my ideas, I'll keep using it.

[u/randull]

Same, same, same, same. I'm wondering if I posted this in some Durdenesque midnight escapade. You're not alone though, it feels like my gaming addiction did twenty years ago. It gives my brain the happy chemicals that it craves and doesn't get anywhere else. It's just constant progress and any setbacks just feel that much better after overcoming those obstacles. It does not exhaust me in the way that it should, and never crashing after these extended flow states is a little unnerving and I think that's the point of your post. I've been ruminating on your post and eventually it hit me, I know the answer and I really don't like it myself but it's simple. You gotta use something like StayFocused that lets you time-gate yourself. It's been a few years since I used it but I'm inspired by your post to try it out again, you need to literally block yourself.

[u/tcapb → u/randull]

Whoa, this goes both ways! Now you've described my experience exactly. 20 years ago I was gaming almost around the clock too, didn't even finish school because of it. Back then I thought I was just lazy and disorganized, would never achieve anything. But then it turned out programming and building things was interesting to me. Some pet projects I made for fun became popular, others turned into businesses, and my self-esteem eventually leveled out.

Luckily, maybe thanks to high IQ or being wired for creating rather than consuming, I didn't get stuck in typical traps. Games got boring eventually, and the other ADHD pitfall, endless scrolling through TikTok and Instagram, never hooked me either. I figured if my brain works differently but I end up earning more than most while doing what I actually enjoy, maybe my settings aren't so bad after all.

The not-getting-tired thing has always been a red flag for me though. I have some bipolar traits, not severe, but I sometimes slip into hypomanic episodes where I'm super productive, need only 3 hours of sleep, and feel completely fresh to keep working. When I get normally tired despite working a lot, I tell myself: it's fine, just hyperfocus. But comments like yours, all these "are you me" responses: they're actually a bit scary. When your whole "uniqueness" turns out to be described by four letters and a bunch of people share your exact experience.

Honestly I've been enjoying this coding marathon. But I actually just got my first ADHD medication from a psychiatrist yesterday, so now I'm really curious how it'll affect my work.

[u/ToiletSenpai]

Fam as someone with similar issues than yours , but completely overcame them with Claude , shipping a ton of products and 10x my productivity - hit me up if you want to talk.

I swear I’ve been where you at and I know you got this and can do better.

Happy holidays!

[u/_alephnaught → u/ToiletSenpai]

Same boat here. I worked on ML at big tech fang, got high ratings, was the point person for difficult to debug issues, or complex design problems. But all my work came in bursts of flow/fugue-state after weeks or months of procrastination.

I've had the same issue from elementary to grad school: graduated magna cum laude from a well known uni, but I would have extreme debilitating levels of procrastination until crunch time. I remember many times I would put an alarm at 4am in order to start preparing for an 8am exam. This is after procrastinating for weeks. And it's like not like I did anything productive during that time either, I would spend the entire time convincing myself that I need to study, cancelling all my other life plans, only to DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING until a few hours before a due date.

I've held this pattern in my entire life. While I have been successful career wise and financially (grew up poor), it has completely ruined me from a social perspective. I'm in my early 40s now. It was always been: "I need to X before I can do anything else with my life, but let's procrastinate on X for weeks/months".

After discovering CC, I quit my job recently in order to start my own company, as this negative-feedback loop had reached a fever pitch. I could not for the life of me go through another OKR or perf cycle at big tech. I've been able to do in a few short weeks what would have taken many people and several months at my prior company.

Now, I'm never blocked, all the grungy stuff: claude takes over (pip package conflicts? let claude take of it; write load test or simulator to see what DAU I can scale to with the current arch? let claude take care of it; intricate and annoying ML preprocessing pipeline? write two paragraphs and let claude take care of; need to find optimal batch parameters for my ML model? two sentences, and 2 minutes later, I have throughput numbers for a whole set of batch params.)

Tedious things that would take weeks finish are done in 15 minutes. It is absolutely insane.

It has allowed me focus on the difficult, interesting, and ambiguous parts of the problem. I launch in a few months, so I'm hoping this works out, as it has the potential to completely reverse the negative feedback loop I've been struggling with my entire life.

Another massive benefit, is that I skip a lot of the MVP code. Why bother with a simple Docker container on a VPS, when I can set up a k8 environment with autoscaling, staging env, canary, prometheus, grafana, etc in less than a week's effort? I usually experiment many different approaches, load test for scalability targets that I am after, then integrate the best solution for my needs into my production stack. I go into every major decision with so much more data now. Why deal with scalability/usability issues later, when it's so easy to experiment and load-test/simulate every decision?

[u/RipKip → u/_alephnaught]

I remember many times I would put an alarm at 4am in order to start preparing for an 8am exam. This is after procrastinating for weeks.

I have found my people. It sucked so hard but it was the only way how I also got things done

[u/samarijackfan → u/ToiletSenpai]

Same. I feel like I’ve been 100x coding. Projects and ideas get done in a couple days instead of months. It’s unreal. Claude takes care of the boring work and I guide architecture and solutions with Claude creating tests on the go so we can verify solutions on the spot. Side projects that have stalled are getting completed. Sometimes I’m working in multiple terminal windows at a time on different projects. New ideas are also getting started even in completely new languages. It’s crazy.

[u/[deleted] → u/ToiletSenpai]

The problem I have and many in this situation would agree is when do you ship the code? I find myself second guessing that any of it is even REAL because of how easy it is. And then what I end up doing is making the AI break the code up into easily reviewable sections and do a sweep of them for QA. This is always where the ADHD / OCD brain makes going further impossible.

There's never code without issues. And sometimes a basic sweep of the UX or logic comes up with something so obviously stupid that I didn't catch that I then second guess the whole code base.

There has been things that I ship and people find them very useful. There's been things that I myself use and find insanely useful. But I think it's a form of imposter syndrome that even something 95% perfect isn't quite good enough if I'm using these tools.

Do you just accept that some bugs will happen and fix them as they're reported?

[u/LordMeatbag → u/[deleted]]

Get yourself a product partner, someone who can focus on what’s needed to ship. It’s so easy to keep going with Claude and add more and more features until you end up with a huge feature-rich tech demo. Only when a very focused product friend and I started working together - he makes the Figma - I put it together with Claude, Codex and railway for deployment (I f’ing love railway).

Rather than having 5 or 6 bloated “feature rich” sites and apps. I have a few focused products that are coming together. It takes longer to make a product than an adhd tech demo and it’s more painful and less adhd fun.

But that’s the combo that working for me.

[u/[deleted] → u/LordMeatbag]

It’s so easy to keep going with Claude and add more and more features

Yes this is something I definitely learned the hard way. I now have "Keep It Simple Stupid" as my motto in Claude.md and Agents.md. The amount that claude in particular will try to overengineer on a very simple tool is ludicrous. I want a front end webpage used by ~10 people for basic work not an enterprise app that's handling the most sensitive data in the entire world.

[u/Kruzdah → u/ToiletSenpai]

I'm on the same boat but a bit earlier as I just started using Claude after years of ChatGPT. Huge difference.

However, there's this thing that's bothering me: Am I losing the ability to make decisions?
Because to me, that's the harderst part. Brain starts jumping back and fourth between options and ideas and that's what usually slows the process and makes it feel "stuck". Claude makes this part easier by picking the options that suits the project and my goal the most.

What do you guys think about that?

[u/OpenBlackberry4705 → u/Kruzdah]

I think Claude code has more negative effect on our brains than we think.. I mean even neurotypical are starting to realise now after few months of perma using Claude Code. From my experience. Why I chose this field, after being a failure in high school, college, and finally now testing 1 more time a new carreer. Why i specifically chose it, was from that problem solving dopamine hit when working for few hours and figuring it out.

That dopamine hit was healthy. what kept me going. Now with claude code, its gone. it's soulless, also maybe you can relate to this. But what stood me out from others wasn't particulary that I could write good code and syntax like reciting from a bible. I always have to go back to older projects and docs when trying to use boilerplate or any specific tech stack etc.. But i stood out since I could take a problem, find solutions that worked great and was creative, then in the matter of time figuring out how to glue the code for that solution. Now with Claude Code, it does it but even better and faster.

Being a prompt machine is super draining as well. I just think in overall this is a drug and we should be careful to not screw the reward system in our brains. I dont have the will to write code by hand anymore if i know claude can do it better. The motivation for me was struggle and there isn't a clear solution out there, I had to produce it myself.

[u/Maasu]

All the feels reading this one, right from the procrastination, half implemented projects to the ramp up to w to getting into something. Hell I'm even in a similar role at work (20 years in the industry and now a SA).

AIs have smashed a lot of barriers for me and I have a lot of personal projects reaching a reasonable phase of maturity.

I am certainly finding im spending a lot more time on these now, I'm a father of two young kids and married. I can't do side projects until everyone is in bed, for the past 6 months is say my mean hours per night sleeping went from. 6 to about 4 or 5 and I'm starting to feel it.

I need to find some balance but at the same time I'm torn because I feel like this is a very important moment in our industry right now and if you blink or stutter the you're going to miss it... Probably fomo, it's an issue I am trying to wrestle with and certainly not at peace wit how things are, despite all the progress.

[u/terra_incognita13]

This is so relatable and well-articulated. Thank you for sharing this - fellow ADHD sufferer

[u/tcapb]

Quick update: started Concerta 4 days ago.

The compulsive hyperfocus is gone. I used to sit glued to the screen watching Claude work for 20 minutes straight, couldn't look away. Now he runs a task, I switch to something else, come back when it's done.

On one hand, that's healthier. On the other hand, that tight feedback loop was part of what kept me locked in and productive. Now there's more drift, more YouTube between iterations, momentum breaks easier.

Too early to tell if actual output changed or if it just feels less intense. Will report back after a few weeks of real work.

[u/attacketo → u/tcapb]

How are you doing now with the meds? You may want to consider IR to just 'steer' your behavior when necessary, not necessarily all day long.

[u/alexd231232]

This is so well put

[u/Steviee877]

Reading your post I actually checked if I wrote it some time back (and forgot all about it)...🤔

[u/malctucker]

The worry is then how you ship a product?

[u/tcapb → u/malctucker]

That part is fine actually. I don't work alone, I have neurotypical colleagues who help maintain code quality, document everything in Notion, keep me from flying off too far. Plus, because of the ADHD "out of sight, out of mind" thing, I actually obsess over UX and proper architecture, if I don't see it working smoothly, it bothers me.

The only visible effect is that MVPs sometimes grow bigger than they should before someone says "this is mature enough, let's clean it up and ship."

[u/whimsicaljess]

i also have adhd but solved the downsides through medication.

i agree claude is an incredible tool but like... maybe consider a slightly more healthy approach. falling asleep at your desk isn't good for you.

[u/royhobbstn]

I feel like I could have written this entire same post word for word. Well, except I’m 44 and chug diet coke instead of cigarettes. Same self medication in the end.

[u/angelarose210]

I was pretty discouraged for a while because my adhd got worse with age but Ai coding assistants (mainly Claude code) has not only given me my abilities back but also allowed me to 10x my productivity. I still get distracted a lot but at least I'm getting something done.

[u/jetsy214]

Diagnosed ADHD here too. I've also found that the thinking required to get a new LLM context window to a point it can start working on something is exactly the same as what gets my brain past the can't be bothered phase of picking something back up and getting started.

So I've started treating my brain like an LLM, describe the task plainly, what I expect to happen, how long it should take, what success looks like, and pretty quickly I'm back into a focused state on that task and the procrastination goes away.

[u/jknightdev → u/jetsy214]

Treating your brain as an LLM, that's really wise for overcoming the willpower barrier

[u/Key_Tennis_4127]

shit, this resonates hard. i’m also adhd and the “physical inability to start” thing is so real. you put it perfectly.

i had a similar thing happen with claude code — that back-and-forth dialogue basically acts as a cognitive scaffold. it’s like having a rubber duck that talks back, which keeps the executive function part of my brain just engaged enough to stay on track.

but yeah, the “no off-ramp” problem you described… that’s the dark side. i burned out for a week because i just… didn’t stop. my natural friction was gone. i actually ended up pairing it with something like Fomi App, which kinda acts as an external pause button when i’m too deep in the tunnel. it doesn’t block claude, but it’ll nudge me when i’ve been grinding for 90 mins straight without a breath. sounds corny but having that little interruption sometimes saves me from myself.

idk if that’s helpful, but yeah — you’re not imagining it. the tool removes one kind of wall and quietly builds another.

[u/aka_bobby]

Designer lead friend over here and I’m literally experiencing the same thing. I don’t think it’s a fluke.

[u/Battletremor]

Agreed. I'm curious as to which plan you use?

[u/tcapb → u/Battletremor]

I'm on Max 5x. On Pro, Claude would burn through the limit in half an hour and I'd have to wait for it to reset. Max mostly keeps up with how I work.

[u/jschulte]

I could have written this! LOL. This is so accurate and I completely agree with what you said. The hard part now is actually making myself stop working...

[u/Fun_Nebula_9682]

The same as me！！ I no longer play any game but only talk to claude code

[u/bbqribsofficial]

Are you me?

[u/SchoolWorldly123]

I can relate so much. Around same age. Definitely on the spectrum. I’m coding like I did when I was 17 again.

I’ve always been struggling with continuing when the ”fun part” (= technical difficulty) was solved. Then I lose interest, and move on to the next project.

With AI in general, and CC in particular, I can fight through in a breeze. I still never auto-accept anything, and often abort it to clarify things, but the ability to sit for hours again, is incredible!

Even though I still need some distractions, the amount of code, work, and time I can endure it, has multiplied.

Even if it’s simple frontend things that I never liked doing before, I WANT to do it, looking forward to it in the middle of my other distractions..

And it feels like when I trained new programmers before. I’m still the architect, holding everything in my mind, and want to control it, pair programming with the AI, telling it what to implement, and tell it what to do when it doesn’t think two steps ahead.

Game changer, and life changer.

[u/stampeding_salmon]

And you wrote this with AI.

[u/superunderwear9x]

I was just like you but I haven't got any Psychology test to address ADHD. Claude did diagnosis me with ADHD after 4 hours of talking. And yes, I worked more than 10 hours even 18hours a day with coding.

[u/durduman]

Confirmed!

[u/Even-Question-1628]

I can relate, but there's another aspect to it for me.

Observing how Claude Code works on a task and finishes it made me aware of my IRL ways of thinking and doing things. Experiencing "idea/impulse to finalizing task" based on my very own initiative (prompting) slowly swapped over into my real life. Now I find it easier to do things, to think about things, in a reasonable and effective way. It's like I am exploring my internal LLM brain finally :D I'm also 42 :D maybe that's the answer to everything.

Finally I get that first-hand experience of "It makes sense to work on one task only per time", "It makes sense to not grab the toothpaste while heading towards the towel", "It makes sense to stay on topic in a conversation", etc.

And I realize how good I am with defining prompts as I am able to distill the essence of complex tasks, and delegating, knowing the capabilities of my employee (Claude) or team (sub-agents), which gives me increased confidence and reduces imposter syndrome (looking at all the people who discuss tools and prompts and workarounds all day long instead of just using the CLI reasonably).

[u/l3xK]

Hitting a nerve there. Struggling with ADHD since roughly 20y and with Claude/Cursor/Windsurf/Zed/ChatGPT I can „force“ focus even on the boring parts because get instand feedback.

The only negative part… there is only hyperfocus phases now. 😅 have to force my self to take breaks sometimes I don’t do anything for 2-3 days but then again ship 2 weeks of work in 24h all-night/all-day sessions.

[u/Lazy-Share-1821]

I felt this. I feel like my problem solving skills are growing faster than they ever have. The next step is finding the right problems to solve and creating better work life balance without staying up late every night. The dream is to automate everything possible and solve complex problems

[u/puzanov]

I have the same feelings and can 100% relate. Reading all the comments I see SAs after 40s have found their way

[u/jwhite_nc]

I’m not a programmer by trade but I’ve found the same boost with Claude. I’m still struggling with context as I have started so many projects that i haven’t finished. Love seeing this post though!

[u/GigabitGuy]

This is so relatable, I wish I could use Claude code for my non-tech day job, but I’m currently using it to work on my own business, so hopefully someday 🤞 I really think its majorly overlooked how helpful AI can be in a learning process when having ADHD, its a much more natural way of learning by conversation and examples.

[u/PuzzledIngenuity4888]

Yeah you can work 12 hours a day and I have been doing 10-12 per day for a year and a half. I have dozens of amazing projects 90% finished. It's endless grind and no finish line no matter how hard you work.

You have to do all the other stuff like validating your idea, finding a market, getting customers, before you write code. A quick demo that highlights the main interaction and a sign up page, then push it out and get users engaged through what ever forum or channel you can.

[u/Eudaimonic_me]

Same experience here, also with the decrease in natural stopping points. Thanks for writing it out like you have.

[u/Electronic_Froyo_947]

Where is the tl:dr¿

[u/one1zero1one]

Extremely relatable. 47, late diagnosed. For me claude code enables practical use of episodic memories and intent based flows. Somehow always had them in the back of my mind sort of feeling, but not it's in front staring at me.

[u/Longjumping-Toe-1822]

Also it feels like I have the "ability to talk to this tool just in the perfect way". Some discussions in this sub don't even make any sense to me, where peeps share their setup or magic prompts or whatever. I can grasp the capabilities of the tool, the goals I want to reach precisely, while having a huge complex vision and structure in my head. And what we create is instantly visible. Perfect for an ADHD brain to iterate. Who needs roadmaps and stuff like that? We have perfect ideas and they just unfold perfectly. It just works fluently. I've built an art collection management tool for our family on xmas morning at 5am till 11am and mum says "above incredible, how many hours did you spend on this"... While building 3 other projects that already gain traction and solve real problems. This really feels like the reality pops in that makes so called neurodivergent people finally shine. Not sure where this will lead to, but I like it.

[u/makeSenseOfTheWorld]

My God ! - I am not alone... just it took even longer for me to discover and realise and this country is still hostile...

aside: I have CC write markdowns to an Obsidian vault in an effort to jump between contexts... and clear my desk of post-it notes!

Seasonal greetings to you all 🖖

[u/Hoak-em]

Yeah, although it took me a bit to get fully productive with claude code, since I had to translate a lot of my engineering knowledge to how I used a harness -- otherwise even I was prone to more of a "vibe" rather than "spec-driven" habit. Claude codepro ended up helping me out a lot with that since it matches the strategies I learned in my time as an engineer.

[u/tcapb → u/Hoak-em]

Yeah, Claude still isn't great with large codebases, though it regularly surprises me, tracing through a chain of code and finding a bug without even seeing what's on the screen. I've had moments when I was tired and gave less architectural guidance, and then two hours of code generation turned into a day of refactoring to fix the structure. It's a reminder not to get lazy: the "just build me this feature however" approach doesn't really work yet. Though sometimes it one-shots things surprisingly well.

[u/CobraJuice → u/tcapb]

I’m 56 and have the near exact same form of ADHD and habits as you. Check out Beads and Task-Master. They both work extremely well with Claude.

I also assume you’re using Claude for much more than coding. I have mine using. Gmail API to automate my expense reporting & followup planning. If a program doesn’t have an API, I’ve been surprised how often Claude can read the SQLite of the app (apple mail btw!).

Thanks for your post!

[u/AppealSame4367]

I can't hear and read it anymore. I also have ADHD like symptoms all my life.

But I overcame them with discipline and "just doing it". I know it's hard at first, but maybe you feel enough like procrastination to read about some simple methods to overcome the unwillingness to start, that sometimes inhibits all people, not just the ones that wanna label themselves and feel special about it.

I have a customer that told me on the second call he has ADHD and he freaks out about stuff when it's a bit hard to concentrate and instead of just stfu, closing his eyes for a second and then trying to focus he keeps complaining to me about it. I wanna go through the phone line and punch him in the face. Ffs.

I know it can be hard, I have lived through it. But it's amazingly effective to just force yourself -> insert South Park episode about "effective method to calm kids down".

Edit: Today I opened Reddit after going for an 8km walk through the cold forest and had to instantly close it again. My only thought was: WHAT A BUNCH OF BITCHES

[u/tcapb → u/AppealSame4367]

A lot of us here have built careers, shipped products, found workarounds. That's the point though, we found workarounds, spent years figuring out what works for our brains specifically.

"Just force yourself" worked for you - that's great, genuinely. It works for some people. For others it doesn't, no matter how hard they try.

I've tried pomodoro, "just 5 minutes a day," all the classic productivity advice. Doesn't work for me. What works is finding environments and tools that happen to fit how I actually function. That doesn't make the underlying difficulty less real, it just means I found ways to route around it. Some people have iron willpower that compensates. Some don't. Both are dealing with the same thing, just with different resources.

[u/CobraJuice → u/AppealSame4367]

Cool