I noticed it before I got into IT, but it seems to have gotten worse.
EDIT: Great comments guys, and thanks. I don’t feel so alone. :)
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Inside you are two wolves.
One has Adhd and the other may be mildly autistic but it turns out they are working together and now its a situation
One by one my family is getting diagnosed autistic and ADHD. I have recently been diagnosed at 35 years old with ADHD. I figure it’s just a matter of time for the other shoe to drop.
I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. There’s significant overlap between ADHD and Autism (also BPD). You could have just one, or all three. But, more important than nailing down precisely which you have, is finding treatments or techniques that help you function in a more effective way in your day to day life.
There’s a YouTube channel called How to ADHD that I highly recommend. She gives a lot of explainers about what ADHD looks like in real life, as well as techniques that she uses to help her.
She’s awesome! One of my favorites, actually. She did a thing called something like tell me you have ADHD without telling me you have it, and every comment was me. Made me go check. Just because you have one or two or all three, doesn’t mean you any less than someone who has none. All it means, is that you see the world differently and must adapt differently.
Totally depends on the challenge of the project - and it follows a bell curve. Too easy and it’s annoying, too difficult (or takes too long) and it’s fucking aggravating. But those rare Goldilocks projects that are a challenge but shit just clicks along? Chefs kiss.
Here’s my unsolicited advice from a software engineer who fluctuates on this:
Try pair programming
Some of my most satisfying work was done in collaboration with my coworkers. Not only did it add an extra social element, the end result came out better than how either of us could have designed the feature on our own.
Try to view your accomplishments in aggregate
My company has us write up self-reviews every 6 months where we summarize all the stuff we got done and what we could have done better. I find this to be a great opportunity to go back through the kanban board and reminisce on all the features I helped ship. Even if you’re programming personal projects this is a good exercise.
Try to find external validation if it helps
This validation can come from various sources. Sometimes it comes from asking for feedback from your manager or coworkers. Other times it can come from customer feedback. It may seem shallow, but hearing praise from others for your work helps to reaffirm that what you do matters to others.
Idk how much of these tips apply to your scenario, especially in IT, but I hope they can be adapted in some way. Ultimately the biggest factor in gaining satisfaction from your work is whether or not you actually like doing it. That’s harder to change.
I’m pretty sure this is just ADHD. And yes, I do have ADHD.
I mean that’s literally what it is from a psychological perspective. Your brain doesn’t reward you for the mere act of finishing a task, so it’s basically impossible to find motivation for it unless it ticks at least one box in your reward center.
I’m not a programmer, but I do have a job where every success proves a failure of the system. It’s draining.
Blame modern Scrum/Agile and the ever tighter deadlines…
I have mainly worked in Scrum environments. Only now at my current position am I working outside Agile and I LOVE it.
What’s the process you’re using instead? Some form of waterfall?
Who maintains a to-do list? sees many hands
Who maintains a done list? sees no hands
Dude, that may actually be a great idea in general!
If I had a nickel for everytime I heard “Stop starting, start finishing!” from upper management, I’d be as rich as them.
