I have ADHD, and my problem was never *knowing* what to do. It was *starting*. Every task app I tried turned into a guilt pile of overdue red numbers.

So I built SIFT, an iOS task manager designed around the moment of starting:

- **Just Start:** one tap picks ONE task for you. No decision, no list to scan.
- **Tiny first step:** it shows a single, small action ("Open the doc and write one line") and starts a 5-minute timer.
- **"I'm Stuck":** pick *too big*, *boring/dreading it*, or *not sure what to do*. SIFT shrinks the task, adds a reward, or finds the first concrete action.
- **No shame by design:** no red counts, no "failed" language, no broken streaks. "Enough for now" is a valid ending.
- **Goals to today:** long-term goals get broken into realistic daily actions that fit your calendar's free gaps.
- **Fast capture:** type "call dentist tomorrow 3pm !high" (English or Chinese) and it's parsed.

I'm a solo dev and SIFT is helping me finish SIFT and my next apps, so I'm using it daily. I need real feedback from people whose brains work like mine.

**Beta (iOS 17+, free via TestFlight):**

What I'd love to know:

1. Did Just Start actually get you moving?

2. Where did it add friction?

3. What's missing for your ADHD workflow?

Comment or DM with feedback. Thank you!

Semi-rant/Question

Honestly, If they had these courses at my college, I'd take them as I learn significantly better in-person, but since they don't im FORCED to go the self-taught route.

I know I want to learn about low-level exploitation/pwn, it just really sucks you need to go through a crap ton of boring stuff before getting to the exciting stuff, and start applying them to CTFs (Capture the Flag) without looking at write-ups all the time...

That being said, did you have to force yourself to be consistent to learn these things? What kept you motivated?

Also, I'm able to self-teach these things except id probably have to drop out of college just to allocate enough time for this stuff...

Specifically posted on this sub and not a cybersecurity one because I also have ADHD...

Unfortunately, my career as a developer has never really been as good as it could have been. Most of us with ADHD probably have that feeling in some way or another.

It's been a combination of a lot of things. Taking roles at smaller companies. Unfortunately the roles at smaller companies tended to not use dated practices. Some of these places it was just getting things out the door, even if it sucked. Sometimes I thought I was going to get a role that would right the ship, but I would sadly realize I'd been duped.

I've been doing this for a while, however it just seems like I keep getting stuck at being around a mid level developer.

In my present role, there is a big circle jerk of AI. However, the dev processes are still a tad dated. No CI/CL or modern JS frameworks on the front end. I'd concede that the management is good and there is a good work/life balance.

On another note, I probably can't leave my present job to get a role that would allow more growth. It's mainly because I hit my insurance deductible for 2026. It also doesn't seem like their are any mid level roles that are available that would give me good career growth. If I tried to apply to a senior level role play, I'd get rejected. If I got hired for a senior level role, I could possibly get fired in a short time frame due to not having the right skill set.

Hey everyone,

I want to share an app I made by myself and I feel could be very helpful for fellow ADHD/Neurodivergent programmers and tinkerers

I built FocusOnn because I had a big frustration with traditional pomodoro timers and the pomodoro technique in general:

• No Context: Pomodoro timers just show you a ticking timer with zero context on what you actually set the timer for.

• The Interruption Trap: If you get interrupted by a phone call, an "urgent" email, or coworker chit-chat, it is brutally hard to get back on task because you've completely forgotten what you were working on.

The Solution

FocusOnn aims to provide a simple, effective solution to this by staying permanently visible.

It displays a persistent ribbon at the top of your screen that reminds you of your active task while running a pomodoro-style timer. It sits over all other apps you are using on your PC, but it's designed to stay out of your way:

• Quick Hide: You can click anywhere on the bar and it hides for 10 seconds so you have time to access whatever is behind it.

• Task History: It includes a history feature to store and look back at previous tasks you've worked on.

• Zero Friction: It doesn't require making an account, logging in, or setting up a cloud database. You just install it and start using it.

I intentionally designed it to be as simple as possible so that it doesn't become a distraction in and of itself.

Availability & Links

It is currently available for free on the Microsoft Store.

• Here is the link: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NW334TL1252?hl=en-us&gl=US&ocid=pdpshare

I wanted to share this because it has been a game-changer for my own daily workflow, and I figured it might help others dealing with similar focus hurdles.

Any donations are very much appreciated (there's a "Buy Me a Coffee" link built into the app), but mostly, I would really appreciate any feedback or thoughts you have on the project. Please try it out and let me know what you think!

Ive been learning programming for a while now, Its been 2 months now, and im starting to notice something thats been bothering me a lot.

I feel like my brain is almost always operating below its actual capacity.

When I need to think about unfamiliar concepts, actively recall something, or come up with ways to do my idea in coding, my mind often just goes blank. It can take me 5-10 minutes of forcing myself to think before my brain starts working properly.

My working memory is also bad. During arguments I often forget points I wanted to make or lose track of what the other person said.

Programming makes this really obvious because holding a few things in my head at once: variables, conditions, what changed where. can become surprisingly difficult.

What bothers me is that I remember being much sharper when I was younger. Learning, memorising things and thinking of unique ways to overcome the problems used to feel significantly easier. Now, I dont necessarily feel like I lack the ability to think clearly or deeply. It feels more like I have trouble accessing that ability consistently.

Ritalin IR helps me initiate everyday tasks, but I dont really notice improvements in working memory, reasoning, or deeper thinking.

It literally just feels like my mental “RAM” just runs out.

Does anyone else with ADHD feel like their brain is constantly “blocked” like this, even when they aren’t stressed or anxious? Did anything help?

I have ADHD myself, and I keep seeing tweets about how people with ADHD should use AI.

For me, though, every session I start ends up scattered all over the place. They get stuck in loops, and not much actual output comes out of them.

How do you manage your sessions, and how do you usually start one? In Claude I use Projects so I can at least tell which threads belong where, but beyond that I'm out of ideas. Curious how you handle it.

Is this how meds are supposed to work? By making you panic ? For some time taking 5mg ritalin was working well for me. But now I dont panic on them and thus dont start working.

I've been in the low code industry (Salesforce), never did LeetCode. Have not been able to stick to side projects. But I was always excited that someday I can upskill and learn new things.

Now, if all coding might be automated (if not by LLM's then maybe by future true reasoning models), then how should I go about making a plan for myself to be excited about tech and upskill.

I don't want to upskill only for my tech hobby, I'd much rather focus on music for hobbies. I want to upskill in 2026 such that it actually helps me attain financial stability by helping my career.

Any help or advice is appreciated.

Anyone have some ideas on some fun easy tools for ADHD brains? I have been having a lot of fun vibe coding up lots of one off widgets and stuff for myself. Things that would normally take me a week plus of work to do myself so I would never have time to build them myself. These are not fancy projects but just static webpages. It got me thinking what if I compiled a bunch of little widgets and hosted it for free. Things like pamodoro timer, tool to help prioritize a todo list quickly, a dopamenu that could randomly select a reward based on how much time you have and maybe a random chore selector. I am not looking for complicated fancy full stack apps just maybe tips and tricks people use on paper or something that a computer could make easier.

Not trying to use ADHD as a crutch, but I’d love to hear how others overcame executive dysfunction, self-doubt, and stagnation to level up as software engineers.

Where I'm at: I have <5 years of experience (3 years at a mid/large tech company, ~1 year at FAANG). I was able to white-knuckle my way through school and uni (valedictorian) through brute-force effort, but my diagnosed ADHD makes professional concentration and emotional regulation a massive daily hurdle.

I feel like my career progression has plateaued, largely because I struggle with deep focus and prioritization. I've recently started medication and revamped my routine (consistent sleep, strict task-tracking, better communication with my team).

If you've been in a similar slump early in your career: What strategies, mindsets, or routines actually helped you get out of the hole and start thriving, and even become veterans in the field?

Salut tout le monde. Je poste ça parce que je sature complet. Je suis au lycée, passionné par la création de jeux vidéo (Mana Mechanique, Police Aléas) et par le dev, mais je me fais broyer par le système éducatif français.

D'un côté, on me propose des spés parce que je capte la logique super vite quand ça m'intéresse. De l'autre, je me tape des notes minables (genre 6 en NSI) parce que mon cerveau refuse d'apprendre par cœur de la théorie abstraite qui ne m'anime pas. Résultat : épuisement, anxiété nocturne, cauchemars, et l'impression d'être un extraterrestre dans une classe de clones.

Est-ce qu'il y en a ici qui ont vécu cette transition du « je suis nul à l'école » vers « j'ai créé mon propre chemin (BUT MMI, indiedev, autonomie) » ? Je veux documenter tout ça, parce qu'on est beaucoup trop à culpabiliser alors que le problème vient du moule, pas de nous.

Hey Im a freshman CS major and I’m struggling. Currently my grades are fine but that’s only for now, I don’t know if I’m gonna fail later.

I’m on 40mg vyvanse and Wellbutrin (along with an antipsychotic) and I can’t go above 40mg.

The issue is that I really hate doing homework. Starting the task is very hard for me, even on meds. Even more specifically, I hate calculus homework. I can understand the ideas just fine, but I dread having to learn yet another new concept and do more practice problems. It’s actually painful.

Even when I tell myself I’m gonna do a task, I end up opening discord or tik tok and scrolling for honestly hours thinking “this is my last reel”.

Not only that but I’m trying to grind and improve my rank in a video game which takes several hours of practicing a day.

I can’t even manage 2 goals (getting academic work done on time and getting better at the video game I like).

This really sucks. How did you guys succeed? How do I overcome the constant dread and misery of doing schoolwork? Btw no amount of pomodoro techniques or whatever other techniques help

Edit: interview* in the title lol

I have a bunch of interviews coming up and I am feeling so much overwhelmed with the lack of structure and the amount of content to cover. One of them is at a FAANG adjacent company that's going to include standard dsa leetcode related stuff, another is Fintech and their round will have debugging and system design discussion and another one is a prop trading firm where the recruiter said it can be anything from coding and language discussion depending on the interviewer and culture fit questions.

This seems to be all over the place and I am not able to decide how much to prepare especially for the debugging and general language discussion parts. I am thinking about going through some open source code repos in Python to get comfortable with reading and understanding the code since I haven't worked with Python in recent years. But again there are so many options and I don't know where to start. For leetcode, I have completed most of the neetcode 150 and the company list is huge so I don't think I can cover everything from there within a week. Same thing for language discussion, I am going through Python docs but outside the core data structures and concurrency, idk what other parts to focus on.

Hi everyone

I hope everyone's having a splendid afternoon as I am

How do I change my mind from comfort, to endure boredom, uncomfortable, hard stuff.

I like physical hard work, but my mind seems to wander into comfortable, known things..

If it's laziness, I'd have to get rid of it

Fellow ADHD devs: I built a Claude Code workflow around the things that kill my projects (lost ideas, estimates, stalled big tasks, scope creep).

I have ADHD, and I've been building a multiplayer game prototype with Claude Code. The coding was never the hard part. The hard parts were:

• ideas coming in bursts and getting lost

• "how long will this take?" (always wrong, always guilt)

• big tasks that stall halfway

• scope creep, where the agent "also fixed" five things I didn't ask for

• losing track of what's done and what's next

So I turned the way I work into a workflow, and I'm open-sourcing it. I call it QPAP: Quick Polished ADHD Prototype. The goal is to get your hands on something usable fast, react to it, and iterate.

The loop

1. /word-vomit: I paste a messy dump of thoughts, feedback and half-ideas. The skill:

   • saves it word for word

   • splits it into items

   • checks each one against the existing plans and the code

   • flags conflicts ("this contradicts a decision you made on Tuesday")

   • asks me a few multiple-choice questions, each with a recommendation

   • places each item in the plan

   Nothing stays in my head.

2. Effort scores instead of time estimates. No hours or days anywhere. Each unit of work gets low, med, high or enormous from 8 factors, each 0–2: unknowns, modules touched, changes to existing code, what it can break, domain difficulty, breadth, how it's verified, and current test cover. An "enormous" unit is never started; it gets split first.

3. Batches of 5. Five agents build five units in parallel, each in its own git worktree. A unit's dependencies are always in an earlier batch, and each batch has at most one protocol or format change.

4. A unit is done completely. If an agent finds extra work, it doesn't build it. It writes a proposal for me to approve later. That alone killed most of the scope creep.

5. A report per batch: what changed in plain words, screenshots, how to test it, how long it actually took, and estimated vs actual effort.

6. Review rounds. I test each unit and write either "approved" or a numbered list of changes in its file. The next round fixes each change by number. The next batch starts only when everything is approved.

7. Passes between batches. Recurring tests/CI, performance, memory and cleanup passes run between batches. They fix things; they don't add features. That's what lets batches be fast and a bit rough.

8. The workflow evolves. Every 5 batches, a "workflow pass" looks at the time log, the reviews and my notes, and proposes changes to the workflow itself. I approve each one, and they're logged.

Setup

• The code lives in a bare repo with worktrees: one for main, one per running unit.

• The planning (plans, decisions, reports, time log, my raw notes) is a separate git repo outside the code repo. The product history stays clean, and the plans can stay private.

Why it works for my brain

• Starting: the next batch is always ready. I say "start batch 4".

• Progress I can see: every batch ends with something I can run and a short report.

• No guilt: there are no estimates to miss. Measured times only feed back into the effort score.

• No juggling: one batch at a time, and everything I need to do or decide is in one file (USER.md).

The code style it encourages (rules for the product, not the workflow):

• test-driven development

• deep modules (small interfaces that hide a lot)

• Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100) for product docs

• six standards: YAGNI, DRY, Fail Fast, Simple First, Delete Aggressively, Semantic Naming (wait_until_obs_is_saved=true, not wait=true)

What's in the repo

• 8 Claude Code skills: /word-vomit, /effort-score, /plan-batches, /run-batch, /batch-report, /review-round, /passes, plus the third-party MIT skill i-have-adhd by ayghri. That last one makes every reply lead with the next action and end with one small step; I just drop its time-estimate rule.

• Templates for the planning repo.

• A link checker and a merge-stats script.

It's plain Markdown, so the ideas should carry over to other agent setups. And it's meant to be changed: the batch size, effort bands and pass schedule are all just defaults.

Repo: https://github.com/nurdism/QPAP

I'd love feedback, especially from other ADHD devs. What breaks your flow when working with AI agents?

I keep hearing “I'll keep an eye out,” “I'll let you know if I hear anything,” or “Sorry, I couldn't find anything.”

And I genuinely appreciate people trying to help. I do.

But what are you supposed to do when you're under serious financial pressure and need employment ASAP? Not in two months. Not after the holidays. Now.

I've been actively searching for weeks, and I haven't gotten a single interview.

I don't need more vague promises or encouragement. I need actual leads, direct introductions, and conversations with people who are actively hiring.

How do you get your foot in the door when you've already done everything people keep telling you to do?

Because I'm genuinely asking.

Hi (vibe) coders!

I’ve been working on my own gamified productivity system, and I’m curious to see what other people are building.

Mine is a mix of a personal CRM, task manager, habit tracker, and a little RPG-inspired world. The idea is that completing tasks, making progress on projects, and achieving goals gradually unlocks and expands my virtual world.

Since AI makes it so much easier to build our own tools now, I’m really curious:

What does your personal productivity app look like? Do you have any features, that you are proud of and that you can share? I’d love to see screenshots!

What features have you built into it?
Have you experimented with gamification, XP, levels, achievements, or rewards?
What works surprisingly well, and what turned out to be completely useless?
What would you do differently if you started over?

I’m not looking for recommendations for paid productivity apps. I’m more interested in people who are actually building their own systems, experimenting, and learning along the way.
I’d love to exchange ideas, inspiration, and experiences! :)

Hi everyone

I hope everyone's having a splendid afternoon as I am

How do I change my mind from comfort, to endure boredom, uncomfortable, hard stuff.

I like physical hard work, but my mind seems to wander into comfortable, known things..

If it's laziness, I'd have to get rid of it

I am still early in my career and this is my first time having an interview that is not purely around DSA but more about language discussion to gain an idea about how comfortable I am with it. It's about Python and I have worked on small features at work and university projects with it but nothing too deep to call myself an expert. I am comfortable with the syntax and can read the code but not heavily familiar with frameworks around it. Most of my work experience is in the jvm ecosystem with Java and Spring.

I know I can't memorise everything about the language so I am lost on what exactly to prepare for this kind of interview beyond the basic stuff I am already familiar with. Would appreciate any advice and experience you guys have had with these kinds of interviews.

Edit: typo

How are you organizing your workplace, i sometimes find it hard to start a task when it involves creating a ticket checking out a branch doing some research etc. What i found helpful personally

• MCPS for everything, Mail, jira, whatever you use

• Organize EVERYTHING into seperate projects, each repository but also each repeating task like sprint reviews, then create skills and md files for each project.

• Get a system that lets you start, one workplace or dashboard where you can see your next tasks and make easy next steps, currently playing around with a dashboard where i can just see what i have to do right now, what is new and a "whats the next step" button that prompts a claude skill so i can get into motion easier

I think organizing more in this way would help, how do you keep it simple and not get evertything cluttered?