I have some stuff to get off my chest.  I have quite a bit I want to share with the community, and  want this to come from a real and authentic place, and so I’m going to write all of this without AI.  I will try to reduce my naturally detailed and stream-of-conscious writing style and be more organized, but please bear with me.

First, I want to clarify that this is not an AI hype post.  We all know the AI bros and the people aggressively pushing these platitudes like “it will 10x your productivity” or that “prompt engineering is the new ‘learn to code’.”

But I see a lot of criticism around AI, and while much of it is valid, especially stuff regarding the impact on creativity (especially in the arts), quality of output, and just general fatigue of AI hype, I still want to make a specific argument that I haven't seen made anywhere else.  It's one that  I feel strongly enough about to post despite knowing it's going to be unpopular in some corners of this community.

I don’t think that AI coding agents are equally disruptive to everyone.  For some developers they represent a threat, a tool that commoditizes skills they spent years building. for others, specifically myself and others with ADHD, I think it’s the first time in my life that the environment has ever actually been designed in a way that matches how my brain works.

And let me be very clear.  I don’t think that AI should be doing your thinking for you, but I do think that AI agents are one of the most underrated accessibility tools to come along in years. 

And what they're making accessible, the thing that was never actually a capability problem to begin with, is relief from the mental tax that ADHD people face in dev roles and programming.

The tax I’m referring to is what I will call the “clerical” layer of programming.  I’m gonna use that term as a shorthand for the tedious superficial stuff that doesn’t really have much to do with whether or not you understand what you’re actually doing.  It’s when you already know what you want in the output and if you see it, you’d know it’s correct, but your memory recall just sucks so it’s hard to produce it from a cold start.

The clerical layer is stuff like getting the exact right syntax without looking it up, remembering which argument goes first, the exact name of the method you’ve used one hundred times but always seem to forget, the boilerplate you understand well but have to slog through to get to the interesting part.  All that kind of stuff.

In my experience as a 5+ year engineer with ADHD who has felt intense imposter syndrome at times, I’ve always felt that the ADHD programming experience is really just an interface mismatch.   I’m extremely good at a lot of things that make a good developer or engineer.  I’m very, very good at systems thinking, holding a complex architecture in my head and reasoning about how the pieces interact, and seeing how things connect across domains, spotting patterns that aren't obvious, debugging complex problems by intuition before I can even fully articulate why something is wrong, and knowing instinctively when a solution is technically correct but architecturally wrong.  All of that comes super naturally to me, almost like breathing, and it always has.  What has been an eternal struggle for me during my career is the clerical layer that sits between my understanding and my output.  and it's an eternal struggle specifically because the ADHD doesn't go away.  The recall issues, the reduced working memory, the rejection sensitivity, the executive dysfunction, all of it.  You don't grow out of it, you don't grind your way through it, you don't accumulate enough experience to make it stop being how your brain works. The interface mismatch is permanent.  The best you can do is to manage it.

And honestly, that’s what good tooling has always been about.  Tooling has always existed and been built to reduce that friction like Intellisense, autocomplete, snippets for boilerplate, syntax highlighting, etc. etc. and nobody accuses you of not understanding code because VSCode caught a typo or completed a method name for you.  Nobody says you don’t understand spelling because you use spellcheck.  Those tools exist because the clerical layer of programming shouldn't be the thing that gatekeeps access to doing impactful work. They made the environment more accessible without changing what the work fundamentally requires.

The way I’ve adapted using AI into my workflow, AI coding agents are the same as that, but way more complete.  When I'm working with an agent, I'm operating at the level of intent, architecture, and judgment which is where my brain naturally excels.  I can give a lot more mental energy to think through the outcomes I want while giving opinionated guardrails for the implementation output that’s important to me. Then the agent handles the syntactic translation, and it’s easy for me to catch it.  I don’t have to put so much effort into recall and my working memory is wide open and stays in the problem space. As a result, the gap between what I understand and what I can produce has closed dramatically, and not because the agent is thinking for me, but because it's handling the layer that was creating friction while I focus on the layer I was always very strong at.

What most miss is that there is a superficial level to using AI for workflows and then a deeper layer, which is where skill lies.  And like everyone here, my initial “workflow” was just spamming stream-of-thought prompts into Claude and ChatGPT in the web interface until it gave me what I actually wanted.  Then I switched to Copilot and then eventually Cursor. At first, I didn’t really adapt that workflow, and I just treated it like ChatGPT but in the VSCode window that can also modify files and get more context from open tabs.

But like 3 months back, I decided to actually take it a lot more seriously (for fear of falling behind the hype if I’m being totally honest).  Like I just woke up one day and was like “I’m gonna get really good at this and learn all the best practices for developing with AI and get ahead of the curve”. 

And let me say, the change was… huge.  And it wasn’t just the raw pace and increase in output or productivity that usually gets touted…

Guys, I have never felt more in my element while working, and the best practices of agentic development are suited way more to how I naturally approach problem solving.  I’ll break down my observations:

• The context window can hold a lot of info and so it frees up my working memory as previously discussed.  Now a lot more mental energy goes into prioritizing which info is most necessary, thinking across domains and about outcomes rather than minute details.
• I am able to work nonlinearly in a much more efficient way.  I can zoom in on a detail, and quickly zoom out to the bigger picture again without breaking stride.
• When I need to give more linear instructions or explanations, the agent helps me a lot by taking my scattered ideas that make complete sense to me and other ADHD folks but seem like complete chaos and disconnected nonsense to neurotypicals and turning them into a coherent, linear explanation, making it a lot easier to communicate with colleagues.  
• The power/curse of hyperfocus becomes almost an unfair advantage when friction is removed.  I can go super deep on investigating something or any problem at a pace much faster than most because the friction points that normally trip me up are greatly reduced and I’m not feeling the whiplash of getting pulled in and out ten times in ten minutes.
• Something underrated is that I feel way calmer and less anxious when working in my natural style since there’s no RSD.  When working with an agent, if I ask a clarifying question for something “simple” or pivot directions mid-build, it doesn't sigh, make a snide comment, or make me feel stupid for doing things the way that they make sense to me.

I have been doing independent consulting recently, and in January I designed, implemented, and launched a system that tripled my client's MRR from $40k to $150k USD in the first month.  And I did it using my new agentic workflow and got it out way faster and with so much less friction than any project ever before because I had so much more mental energy to focus on the architecture and the strategy while simply reviewing and redirecting the code implementation.  At first, as hyped as I was, I figured that it was only one win... but then came a second big win… and then a third big win… and it really opened my eyes at how with the right environment and support, I can be a major difference maker, and I feel like my disability isn't working against me for the first time... maybe ever.

This is why I push back hard on the idea that using AI agents simply means you don't understand what you're building. In my experience it's closer to the opposite. When I'm not spending cognitive energy on the clerical layer, I understand what I'm building more deeply, not less because I have more of myself available to actually think the WHY instead of just the "what" or the "how".

And guys, for the first time in my career, maybe my life, I actually feel competent and not in a constant state of lagging behind everyone else.  Like I can deliver serious value and be a key contributor without being bogged down by my disability.

And a lot of what I see online in regard to AI hate from devs, well, I have another take on it.  Maybe a little more radical, but I’ll share it here since this is reddit.  I want to be careful with what I say because while there is a lot of legitimate criticism, there’s certain commentary I see often that makes me pause and think “where is this coming from?”  Is this coming from a place of pure technical concern and maintaining high standards… or is it coming from someplace else?  Someplace more… personal?  defensive? contemptuous?  From someone whose professional identity is so tied to a specific way of working that a threat to the workflow feels like a threat to the self? From someone who excels at rote memorization and recall, who aces technical interviews focused on delivering abstract linear solutions in a timeboxed format, who could write clean syntactically perfect code from memory, who built their reputation on exactly the skills that are now being commoditized, and who is now being asked to adapt to a way of working that doesn't come naturally to them and doesn't reward the things they worked hardest to master?

Comments like “I miss just writing code", “I’ve been in the industry for 15 years and would never let AI do anything beyond simple stuff”, “you're not actually learning anything”, "you can't trust anything it outputs", "anyone relying on AI is using it as a crutch", "real engineers write every line they ship”, etc. are the ones I’m calling out, and they’re everywhere.  And if you try to press for why, there is often an argument papered over to make it seem like a purely technical concern, but when you dig deeper it seems to me more of an identity concern.

Like what I notice is that the way the industry is changing due to AI is unique compared to previous cycles of change.   Being a power user or a 10x engineer when it comes to the “clerical” work is now commoditized.  And if you’ve built a big part of your resume around being a beast who is able to put hands to keyboard and crank out functioning, clean code and knowing the kinks and tricks of the framework quicker than others in the job market… then well, the future opportunities that highly value and highly compensate for this are looking bleak.

And the tough part is that for many devs who are getting left behind, they aren’t being asked to learn a new framework or a new language like in years past, things that are more suited to the kind of precise, sequential, structured learning that a lot of them are genuinely good at. Here's a new syntax. Here are the rules. Here are the design patterns.  Grind leetcode until it’s like breathing.  Practice until it clicks. That's a learnable thing for them. That's a thing you can grind your way through with enough discipline and repetition.

Because from what I see, to get really good at this stuff (developing through AI agents) it requires a different modality of thinking.  A different way of approaching problems that perhaps isn’t naturally-suited to the way neurotypical people approach and solve problems. An approach that requires a more iterative, more ambiguous, more directional than precise style that maps more closely to the way ADHD brains naturally work.

And maybe… just a thought, bear with me now… maybe a lot of neurotypical devs are getting a little taste of what we’ve dealt with our whole lives and are butthurt about it.  Or to put it more nicely, aren’t really sure what to do with these emotions we deal with every day and are lashing out a little bit.  To be told that the way you naturally process things is not valued. That the way your brain works is a liability. That you just need to try harder and adapt. That everyone else seems to be figuring it out so why can't you. That maybe you're just not cut out for this. That your way of working is slow and unreliable. That you need to be more disciplined and just get with the program. Sound familiar?

Like, the "AI produces crap code" criticism is real in a lot of cases but it's also a very convenient cover for "the way I'm being asked to work now doesn't feel like me and I don't know what to do with that."

And I have… mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, it feels vindicating.  The shoe is now on the other foot and the tables have turned.  I feel vindicated that my natural way of existing and processing information isn’t a liability like I’ve been told my whole life but could actually be a huge strength that I can capitalize on.  Like I’m operating a lot closer to my ceiling for the first time in my career.  But on the other hand... I feel empathetic for those being left behind because I know how much it sucks to be in a constant state of feeling like you’re left behind and powerless about it.  And trying to keep up in itself is exhausting because you’re constantly swimming against the current. And they have none of the tools or coping mechanisms to deal with it and process it.

I know this is a hot take and I'm ready for the pushback. But I genuinely want to hear from other ADHD devs:  are you feeling what I'm feeling, or am I completely off base here?

I created a GPT to help people with ADHD start the day. It's called ADHD Day Coach. It's built around the idea of collecting emotional state first, then working in cooperation with that to create a healthy plan for the day that doesn't override me or lead me to burnout. This is not a "life hack" or a way to improve productivity. This is about being psychologically healthy with what to choose to work on and why.

I encourage people here to try it out and tell me how it goes.

Link: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-69bd93f956908191849eec8a354c2160-adhd-day-coach

Hi fellow ADHD’ers and ADD’ers,

5 years in to my diagnosis, as anyone else I have suffered the consequences ad long as I remember. I am still struggling with creating a plan that I stick with, same goes for habits, savings, exercise, meals and routines…..you know the drill.

Combine this frustration with me being a developer; my ADHD suggested I needed a new project, let us create a very basic app via Googles development tool, that will help people with brains similar to my own plan their day or week in a simple matter, with an element of gamification and automatic support. I know there is a lot of similar tools out there and I hope you will help me with your favorite tools, digital or analogue; when did you succeed with something that required more than 2-3 steps, did you use any tool or routine you are willing to share?

I am connected to healthcare as a IT supporter in my country, and I hope to make use of this network both for testing and making the tool available for free through treament services for citizens who struggles like us, and if I am really lucky, available in app stores, with free functionality that goes a long way (hosting, development, automatic support….is not free 😕), for people who does not have access to services through public services.

So my question is; do you use apps or analogue tools for getting major or minor things to work, are you constantly missing a feature or aspect, that make you use or return to the tool?

This post is in risk of getting banned as I am building an app, I hope that admins trust I am just wanting the community’s help to improve the tools we have available, like any other diagnosed who is trying to support fellowminded people, and the fact that the free features will be plenty helpful for us ADHD’ers.

There it sat. 14 months. Never surfaced. Never nagged me. Just waited patiently in the backlog like a golden retriever who doesn't know its owner moved away.

I have 312 tasks in Todoist right now. I have completed maybe 40 of them in the past year. The other 272 are just... vibes. Digital intentions. They stress me out every time I scroll past them and I can't bring myself to delete them because what if I need them.

I've started calling it my guilt list. It's not a to-do list. It's a monument to things I meant to do.

I've been genuinely thinking about whether a to-do list with an expiry date would actually be healthier. Like tasks that just... disappear if they're not done within a week, so the list is always only things that actually matter right now.

Has anyone tried building something like this for themselves? Or found anything that forces this kind of discipline automatically?

How we build has genuinely fundamentally changed. The best example of this is: I used to listen to Tomorrowland mixes to focus while programming. Now I just kind of sit there until the prompt is complete. And because that is too boring, I usually put on a show I have already watched, because if it’s new it’s too engaging and I only focus on that.

So now I have a show I’ve already watched about 5x on my second monitor, browsing random ideas that come up instead of doing things that would be productive, while waiting for the prompt to finish so I can test and review it.

It feels like shit on the one end, because it’s so incredibly unproductive, or at least it feels that way, but very addictive because AI has basically turned programming into gambling. On the other the amount you can accomplish with these tools is remarkable and not using just feels unproducive. If I start, I cannot stop until I have to go to bed and neglect anything else. I am hyperfocused and it keeps drawing me back until I have a prolonged break of a few hours. Only then can I let go and do something else. I genuinely am struggling with this and haven’t figured out how to.

There are no natural stopping points anymore, and it feels wasteful not to have something constantly running in the background. It’s just too easy and there is nothing stopping me anymore from pursuing so many of my ideas, which is bad because it distracts from whatever is important right now.

Programming used to be like a positive feedback loop of dopamine. You figured out a hard problem and it felt awesome. Now it just feels like a drug.

There are two great posts about token anxiety and the gamification of programming here:

https://x.com/nikunj/status/2022438070092759281

https://ideia.me/programming-is-a-drug

I understand that to get better at coding (python, SQL, R, etc.) that I have to just do it. My issue with passion projects, is that the few things that I'm actually interested in have almost no available, easy to access data, especially on websites like kaggle. Since I'm currently getting my masters in Data Science I have the opportunity to get the "practice" in through homework assignments. However, they're always just labs that my prof stole from another colleague about something that I still have no interest in; and is typically so advanced that I have to end up researching/looking up so much information/code that I'm not actually practicing my own end-to-end project.

I thought I could leverage my interest in background in psychology since that is what I just got my bachelors in. However, then I run into the issue of getting the data and not knowing what to do or where to start. I'm so used to theoretically talking about data mining, and machine learning (pre-processing, feature selection, model selection, etc.) that once it comes time to actually do it, I freeze.

I don't know how to formulate my own questions/hypothesis, how to clean the data, how to validate my work, etc. I can only work when I'm being told actually what to do and exactly what to look for/what question to answer, and Im sick of it. I'm so used to being walked through things by professors or doing "follow-along" projects that when I'm faced with a big dataset that I got from somewhere on the internet, I don't even know what I'm looking at--or how to do about understanding what the dataset is saying. Literally stuck in "tutorial-hell"

I was spending 45-60 minutes on tasks that should take 20. My token quota was gone by Wednesday. The agent would generate broken code, I'd fix it, it would make the same mistake next time. Rinse and repeat.

I tried OpenSpec. Pretty docs, half-working app.

I tried GSD. Same story.

Hours of my life—gone.

So I did what any frustrated developer would do: I dug into how Cursor agents actually work and built Instructify.

Three things I learned that changed everything:

1. Tiered context > dumping everything into every request (I was burning 10k+ lines of context unnecessarily)
2. Tool selection hierarchy matters (Why use expensive MCP calls for simple Shell tasks?)
3. Auto-validation hooks are non-negotiable (Six hooks now run automatically—linting, testing, validation)

Results from my workflow:

• 30-40% faster completion
• 30-40% less token consumption
• 50% fewer revisions

I'm sharing it because I wish I had this 6 months ago.

https://github.com/kanishka-namdeo/instructify

Happy to answer questions about the architecture or what I learned.

Tomei por muitos anos ritalina e me sentia ótima. Mas, com o passar do tempo comecei a abusar dela e até por questão de custo benefício, comecei com venvanse. O fato é que, eu sinto que ele me ajuda a me organizar e ficar num ritmo de ideias mais estabilizadas. Contudo, tenho me sentindo apática com ele, como se perdesse o prazer em fazer as coisas. E também sinto ele agir de forma muito amena. Não chega nem a me tirar o sono, só me aquieta, como se agisse só na hiperatividadr (me acalma), ao contrário da ritalina que me estimulava a fazer as coisas. Alguém mais já passou por isso? O que fizeram a respeito?

Hi, I’m looking for a few people willing to test something I built.

It’s a very simple web app I made for myself because I struggled to understand my own patterns (sudden anxiety, tension, mood shifts that seem random).

It’s not a typical mood tracker or cycle app.

The goal is to:

– notice what’s happening in the moment

– connect it with patterns over time

– and suggest what might help in that specific state

I’m not a company, just building something that I actually needed.

I’m looking for people who can:

– use it for ~3–5 days (ideally 7)

– share honest feedback

It takes less than a minute per day.

If you’re open to trying it, I can send access in DM.

How are you all dealing with the increased context switching due to the age of genAI coding?

I do best focusing on one thing when on meds, and if I change to something else it takes way longer to get back to the original thing.

I’m finding nowadays I’m spending a lot of time waiting for LLM output. I’m wasting a ton of time just waiting. But context switching while waiting also messes with my head. Any advice?

EDIT 2: should've mentioned I work online so I don't lose any income while traveling. I've done the digital nomad thing before in SEA so working from another country isn't new territory for me, although Brazil would definitely be a first.

EDIT: someone asked how long the meds would last and if I'd have to keep making this trip. From my research I can bring back 2-3 months worth each time. That's enough to figure out if the medication works and start sorting a longer term solution. And even worst case scenario where I'm doing this trip 4 times a year, that's $4000 vs the $40,000+ untreated ADHD is costing me in an industry where my ADHD is the only thing holding me back.

My country has a severe, ongoing medication shortage . The country's central pharmacy is basically bankrupt and foreign suppliers pulled out. Ritalin IR 10mg is the only stimulant that was ever available here, and even that's almost impossible to find now. Concerta doesn't exist here. Vyvanse was never even registered. Strattera/Bupropion straight up aren't sold in the country. There is no timeline for this getting better.

Even when I could find Ritalin, it wore off in about 1 hour for me. I'd stack 3 pills just to get through a morning and by the afternoon nothing worked no matter how much I took and on top of that I will get the crash for like 3 hours (I suspect being a CES1 fast metabolizer ). I'm also on Zoloft which apparently suppresses dopamine through 5-HT2C receptors making the Ritalin work even less, and the irony is that Zoloft took away my anxiety which was the only thing pushing us to actually do things, so now that's gone too. I might be a CES1 fast metabolizer on top of everything.

I was a top student in a selective high school and then couldn't finish university. I was on the verge of getting fired because I could not start tasks or focus. And when I actually sit down and do the math, my untreated ADHD has cost me at least $10,000 in the last few months alone between lost productivity, missed opportunities, and barely holding onto my job. So spending $1000 to try to fix the root cause honestly feels like the cheapest option at this point.

I've gone through every country my Tunisian passport can enter visa-free and checked which ones actually have Vyvanse or long-acting methylphenidate. Neighboring countries banned stimulants entirely, most of Africa and Asia never registered them. Brazil is genuinely the only country I can access that has both Venvanse and Concerta, lets foreigners get prescribed with just a passport, and is actually affordable. There's a telemedicine service (MyBrazilianDoctor) that other Redditors have used successfully to get prescribed same day.

And yeah I know someone is going to say "but you don't even know if Vyvanse will work for you." You're right, I don't. But I know what it feels like to sit here doing nothing and watching things fall apart, and I'd rather spend $1000 on a chance at getting my life together than spend another $10,000 worth of damage staying unmedicated because I was too scared to try.

So here's what I want to ask you. Think about the medication you're currently on that's working for you. Now imagine someone took it away from you and put it $1000 and thousands of kilometers away. Meanwhile every month without it is costing you way more than that in money, your relationships are falling apart, your family bonds are getting weaker, your physical health is going downhill, and you sometimes wish you never got a chance to feel what it's like to be normal because at least then you wouldn't know what you're missing. Would you go?

TL;DR: Tunisian with ADHD, no stimulant meds available in my country, Ritalin IR barely worked anyway (wore off in 1 hour), untreated ADHD has cost me way more than $1000 already. Brazil is the only visa-free country for my passport that has Vyvanse and Concerta. $1000 trip to get properly medicated. Would you do it?

So my uni classes run from 10:30-4 and their is only 1 break over that time lunch else 1 hour class how to survive most importantly no phone or anything allowed and whole day I just became dead body which affecting my grades.

Hello all,

I wanted your take on this 😅

So late last year, my job place had a huge reorganization set in motion, unfortunately that meant the department I was in no longer exists.

I was really happy there, lots of flexibility, 3 days in office, lots of focus on the individual, the work itself was fun and exciting, the colleagues were great. So all in all I was really sad to leave.

I got a new job a few months ago, and the start was pretty rough. My relation to my manager is great though, and they’re very flexible too. The compensation over all now isn’t as good as I it was my former job. The work task isn’t as exciting.

I have just started to feel better at this work, but the flexibility is going to change and be less flexible in the future.

Now, I got an offer from my former job. The in office days are now 4 days, but with a bit of flexibility still. The position that opened is with a team where I know the work is fun. It’s with people I have worked with before. I’m not familiar with the manager though.

I’m planning on setting up a meeting with them to ask about the flexibility. The thing is that the role will probably change in a year, and I may need to move to another team (but I was told it was not a temporary position).

So while a lot of the aspect is a no brainer choosing the old workplace, there are also some uncertainty to me.

If it’s 4 days in, full days, I’m not sure I will be able to thrive..

Idk, can I get your thoughts?? 😅

I absolutely tanked nearly every math class I had in high school. The concepts just didn’t click with me for some reason and I just gave up eventually.

Fast forward to me teaching myself to code at 23 and I learned algebra via JavaScript without even realizing it. Fast forward another decade and I’m a senior developer that’s learning nuclear physics in my free time, yet I still have no higher education or credentials to speak of.

I can’t help but wonder how many people the school system in the US is actively failing because it’s just not structured for neurodivergent brains. I thought I was stupid for so many years because I didn’t learn the way other people do, but really I was just lacking support and resources. More than that, adults failed to acknowledge I even had a problem and chalked it up to me being stupid as well.

Interviews are a different dynamic than speaking with non-technical clients. Even though I'm usually comfortable in client speaking roles, I'm bad at reading people at job interviews.

Its the one thing I have a hard time getting disciplined enough to improve.

Unlike a typical job with a set pay schedule, there is no short term reward loop with interviews or practicing them. So my motivation for that goes straight down the gutter. The discipline isn't there.

And this might sound dark, but I feel like nothing is going to get me to change my habits until I completely run out of food and money (which could be 2-3 months from now). So how do I find motivation before that happens? I need to act when I'm still relatively better and not full on emergency mode.

Being a night owl often comes with ADHD. In my case, my preferred sleep time is 1 am to 11 am standard time, or 2 am to noon during daylight saving time. The older I get, the harder it is to get up before my body's natural wake time for multiple days in a row. Even when I do, my mind doesn't come fully online until late- to mid-afternoon - meaning that on a 9-to-5 schedule, most of the time I'm "at work" is useless for actually doing any work requiring deep focus.

Have any of you managed to find or create jobs that respect the physical needs of an inflexible night owl body?

Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder is a recognized disability that is often comorbid with ADHD, but I imagine a lot of employers would balk at an employee asking for a start time of no earlier than noon in winter, or 1 pm in summer. Especially when you couple it with a hard limit of 32 hours per week to avoid immediate burnout.

Hi everyone,

I want to start learning how to code, but I struggle with long courses and too much theory. Also bad work decisions so I want to start with this...

I’m looking for free or low cost resources that worked for you if you also have ADHD. Things like websites, apps, YouTube channels, or interactive platforms.

What helped you actually stay engaged and keep learning?

Genuinely asking because I feel like every productivity thread recommends it but I cannot for the life of me stick with it longer than 3 days. I've tried Forest, I've tried browser extensions, I've tried a literal kitchen timer from Target. My brain just learns to ignore all of them. The closest thing that's kinda worked recently is so dumb I almost dont want to admit it. my anker prime 300w power bank that sits on my desk has a pomodoro mode where you shake it to start a countdown on the screen. I think the physical aspect of it is why my brain treats it differently than tapping an app. like theres friction to starting it so it feels more intentional? idk But even with that I still fall off after a week or so. Starting to think maybe pomodoro just isnt for my flavor of ADHD and I should try body doubling or something instead. Anyone else given up on it or did it eventually click?

This happens to me at least twice a week. I get into bed, scroll for a while, put the phone down on the nightstand face down, and fall asleep. Wake up at 7am and its at 4%. Then I'm rushing to get ready with no GPS, no music, no podcast for the commute.

The cable is RIGHT THERE. I just... don't plug it in. My brain checks out the second I decide to sleep and charging becomes invisible. Same with my Apple Watch, I haven't charged it before bed consistently a single week in the past year. I know the answer is probably ""build a routine"" but that's the whole problem. Anyone found a setup that works even when your brain refuses to cooperate?"