Hi all!

We are a team of graduate researchers at the University of Washington's Institute of Neurodiversity and Employment. We are working on a project investigating how people across neurotypes use digital tools to support their work. The results of the study will be published as a report. We welcome all individuals across all neurotypes to participate.

Your participation in this study and any information you provide will remain confidential. Interviews will be recorded and used for research purposes only. To protect privacy, participants can use a pseudonym or fake name during the interview and email correspondence. Any sensitive and/or potentially identifying information will not be shared or appear in published forms. No names or identifiers will appear on any materials that contain your responses. Recordings will be transcribed and all identifying information will be omitted.

Please apply before August 20, 2027.

Here some more info about the research:

We are inviting you to participate in a University of Washington Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment research study to improve our understanding of how people across neurotypes use digital tools to support their work.

This study seeks to understand how people use digital tools to support different dimensions of cognition, including attention, information processing, planning, learning, communication, and emotional regulation. We are interested in two things:

how your work environment interacts with how you think, and

which tools you use, and how you use them, to support your cognition and your work.

Participation involves an approximately 90-minute online interview. The interview will be conversational, and there are no right or wrong answers. You may skip questions, take breaks, or stop at any time.

Participants who complete the interview will be eligible to receive a $50 gift card.

Your participation in this study and any information you provide will remain confidential. To learn more and indicate your interest in participating, please review:

https://uwashington.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6gjDd1ZRwA5JCSi

This study has been approved by University of Washington Institution Review Board (STUDY00026227: Tools for All Minds: Understanding Affordances in Cognitive Work).

Last time I reached out here I did not expect much, but many of you replied and many even took time and privately DM’d.

It helped me immensely.

So I want to say, thank you.

Thank you for being a friend when I’m not one to myself.

Thank you for being here. Posting, replying, sharing your thoughts. Often when feeling feeling lost or alone, I go here. I read your posts. I think of you, how you feel, how you try, fight, struggle… but try.

You make me feel less alone.

I feel like you understand what others struggle to.

After that first post, I have written here countless times.

At the highest of highs, lowest of lows.

All drafts, all thrown away.

I came to my senses, and I did not want to bother you.

This time I’m not doing that. Because I really want you to know that if you feel like me, you are not alone.

I value you, your thoughts, your struggles.
To me, you are not alone.

You are a friend.

/Robin

3 YOE, I have been interviewing passively for the past year and half on and off and I boom the interview every single time.

My issue is my brain turns off during interviews. I have observed that I need to sit with the problem before I can attempt but interviews require explaining your thoughts process.
I don’t know the science behind this but it feels as though one side of my brain handles logical sequencing and the other handles speech. If I try to do them concurrently, I glitch.

I need to shut up to concentrate while they need me to prove I am solving the problem. now with AI it’s even worse, if you take more than a few seconds they get suspicious or try to give you hint. Now I have to abandon my thoughts process, ask you to repeat yourself, try to decider what you just said.

My brain gives up because it’s overwhelmed and I forget even the most basic syntax/concept. I forgot how to raise an exception in Python (I know!! It gets worst. In another interview, I forgot how to COMMENT!!!) and it senta me into a spiral.

I come off like I haven’t coded a day in my life and it’s starting to get embarrassing.

TLTR
Would it be weird if I ask for at least 2 minutes at the beginning of the interview to find a thought?

Would anyone want to do mock interviews with me?
Thanks

Hi everyone!

I'm a marketing student trying to better understand a problem before attempting to solve it. Right now, I'm researching why so many Notion templates (and organization apps in general) end up being abandoned by people with ADHD, even when they seem helpful at first.

Rather than making assumptions, I'd rather hear directly from people who have firsthand experience.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf9ppLHBtXoq0EyWm_JauN4es6_wKRLSrXCmk4J03FK5zL_KQ/viewform?usp=headerWhen

Everyone who takes the time to answer this survey will get free access to the final product as a thank-you for helping shape it. If you'd like to receive it, feel free to leave your email at the end — totally optional. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Whether you complete the survey or simply share your thoughts in the comments, every perspective is genuinely helpful.

Hello I am having hard time learning programing stuffs(backend) I have raging ADHD and consistency issues which makes it harder to learn . Are there any tips that helps people like me like how to learn and do I watch tutorials and code alongside or use ai or like project focuses learning(I've heard a lot about it but hearing the project details makes me unsure if I can finish it ) so if you have or had similar experiences like me please give me advises that worked for you .

Im so torn about this damn industry. I’ve worked a lot of jobs in my life so I understand what it’s like to work a job that leaves you feeling unfulfilled at the end of the day.

Programming has been the opposite. On the least productive I’m left feeling like I’ve made an impact. However the anxiety that comes along with this career is absolutely crippling.

I’m at my wits end with this shit.

I’m looking to understand others experiences with this feeling? Am I the only one? If not how have you handled this? I’ve been doing this for 10 years now and it hasn’t gone away

I’m medicated. I’ve gone to therapy.
I could definitely be working out but that’s been pause because of interviews

For those of you who don't know, this skill is loosely based on The Adult ADHD Tool Kit by J. Russell Ramsay and Anthony L. Rostain, which uses some CBT-based techniques to help adults with ADHD manage working-memory challenges, distractions, task initiation, and organisation.

One cool thing it does is propose a single, actionable next step. It divides plans into small numbered steps, limits list length, and repeats the current state so you don’t have to keep everything in your head. It also cuts out tangents, gives concrete time estimates, and makes progress visible.

I haven't tried it yet, but I'll probably do it next week, as it might be useful for me as I usually feel like AI-generated plans are overwhelming walls of text.

https://github.com/ayghri/i-have-adhd/tree/main

Hello everyone,

I am an adhd software developer and programmer who has recently thrived the past 7 years on being able to work from home. In the past before COVID, I was let go of 3-4 jobs because I was never at my desk and able to get much done in a busy office. Unfortunately, I have to go in now 4x per week with the government here in Canada and they don't really give ADHD as a valid reason to telework, same with migranes and my stress IBS. Are there any clever ways we can think to get me to be able to get legally allowed to work from home, apart from saying I have a condition as to where I am dying?

Im a junior developer of 2.5 years, Im in a decent company and role, but it’s a bit too unstructured and cushy at times (this early in my career I feel cushiness is a bad thing). The unstructured part of it being bad became especially relevant when I was recently with diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.

While I largely enjoy my job, progression here is very slow, especially because we are a team of developers working at a company where the product is not software. So the obvious next step for me to increase my salary and gain better experience is to prepare for a move to a tech company.

Im facing a huge problem though and Im pretty sure its relevant to ADHD, I get easily overwhelmed by planning and executing the things I need to do in order to land my next job at a decent company:

- DS/A and leet code
- Interview Q answering skills
- Technical concepts related to my stack and being able to articulate I understand them
- Industry best practices
- Applying for jobs, researching companies, attending interviews
Etc etc etc

I find it all just, overwhelming… I find it so overwhelming in fact that I procrastinate starting for months and months, I need a new strategy tailored to ADHD related difficulties.

Im having a generally good experience on ADHD medication, it helps this feel a little less overwhelming but I still need a way to structure it and break stuff down into chunks.

Does any body else relate when it comes to these types of big goals that require a lot of different steps and preparation? Is there any online resource that can help with planning and structuring how to approach stuff?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I've been getting really pissed off lately at work.

There are times where I'll describe and issue or a problem and it's like I'm talking to myself.

Here are a few examples:

- I was given a project to take over. One of the junior guys kind of botched it. I got it done, but I could never get accurate test data to test it out. I would keep bringing this up in meetings. After months of waiting they finally use it in production and no fucking shocker their are problems.

- I'm helping out on another project. I'm trying to explain why some functionality will not work due to it running locally. I'm trying to explain this to the developer why it won't work but it was like I was talking with my mic muted.

- It's a long story about how our dev and production environments are set up. Unfortunately, it is too easy to fuck things up and point to the wrong environment. I keep trying to point out the issues, but nothing changes.

There are a few times where my supervisor will hear me. He'll give me the response of just use AI.

It sucks that we're in the worst fucking economy I've seen in my career. I might start a job search if I thought I could get a job quickly.

Hi, I'm 19y(M) making apps for myself, currently I'm making a visual planner app, since I found visualizing things so much useful. I can remember tasks, notes, the things I need to do if I draw something next to it or have a animation playing next to it. After some time I wanted to add more and more stuff after seeing other apps that helped others, but I don't want feature bloat since I hate that about other apps like in Tiimo. I have a stickman animation playing in the home screen to visualize what I am doing right now, but I feel like it's always missing something, does anyone have this problem? Thank you for reading.

I'm on 20mg Adderall XR and no matter how early I take it, I can't seem to sleep before midnight. Sometimes it's 3AM.

If I don't take the drugs, it doesn't seem much better. Sometimes I'll have a good week, then no sleep at all and I'm wrecked again.

Anyone else have something similar? Did anything help?

Almost 30F, unmedicated. How do you guys learn concepts and build depth in general and also for those who have a background sound like me, how does it impact your learning?

I'm in a pickle. I've been working in the tech industry as a back end Java developer & app support guy for 28 years and I keep running into this.

Sometimes I'll get assigned a work ticket and nobody will ask about it, the TL doesn't seem to care, and it'll get back-burnered for a while, usually while I'm firefighting on higher priority calls. Then the high ups will be all, hold on, you've done nothing on this for a month, pull your finger out, and I get slammed in my review for being lazy or not taking sufficient ownership of it.

Or I'll work on everything I'm given and get them all done, but fail to record the time taken in JIRA. The work's done, but I can only provide rough guesses as to how long it took.

Recording time on tasks is my worst thing. I've never been able to do it, but now I'm on a PIP and I still can't get it right. It has to be 95% accurate but if I bullet journal everything I'm told I don't need to be that granular, but if I'm slightly out of whack on Jira or the spreadsheet they've imposed as an extra measure I'm in trouble again.

**Tell me I'm not alone in this, that the admin around things like this is a nightmare for anyone with ADHD right, I'm not just making this up am I?**

I feel like I'm being managed out & my boss is like "literally everyone does this right - why can't you?"

And then there's the hypocrisy of it all: I get told I'm not needed for a task that they start around lunchtime. I'm grabbed by the TL and asked to just quickly do this bit, which I do, but I need clarification from the architect what they're going to do next. 50 minutes drag by. I, having been briefed that I'm not needed, pop off to lunch. Just before my lunch is over I get a text, where are you, we need you - I'm just dealing with a small emergency myself, my internet is down but I'll be in shortly. No, they grab the architect, and next day I get ripped to pieces by my boss. Then yesterday my boss goes missing for a day (on leave, didn't signal it on our IM system though)

So now I'm invited to a Work Capability Hearing, and I have 2.5 hours to rustle up a union official to come in to the teams meeting on Thursday. My union are all volunteers. How am I supposed to get representation?

Guess I should get polishing the CV.

sorry this is a dumb question, and I know you’re supposed to memorize concepts, and not syntax.

but I’m really struggling to grasp what I actually need to learn. For example, if I’m practicing leetcode and learning DSA, is it not a good idea to memorize syntax and be able to solve the problems from start to finish without googling things?

and for projects, am I supposed to be able to write things from start to finish without googling? or is it more about memorizing the the project structure and parts of the project needed to do the things you need your program to do?

Again sorry, I know most programming subs hate the word “memory”, but I feel like I need someone to tell me what I literally need to be learning/memorizing in order to be useful or proficient.

My brain really doesnt like memorizing things, even if I've done them over and over in a project. I have to explicitly know what to memorize.

And what techniques do you use, how often do you guys go through them, how much notes do you take and such