| Backstory: I'm a senior engineer at one of the world's top 10 tech companies. I've had ADHD (and some kind of light Asperger's) my entire life, to the point where I couldn't concentrate on anything the first 12 years or so of my academic career _except_ for certain subjects that really interested me, like math. Some things that works well for _me_: 1) Good noise-cancelling headphones. I'm extremely sensitive to noise in the office. 2) Repetitive, monotone music. My productivity rises by 2-5x if I listen to hours and hours of repetitive techno sets. It's like I'm micro-dosing on LSD or something and the code is just flying out of my fingers. 3) Not getting disturbed when the headphones are on. Communicate with your team that headphones on = use Slack for communication, because you are in The Flow State 4) https://selfcontrolapp.com/ to help prevent procrastination 5) Martial Arts with sparring. Could be anything like MMA, BJJ, Muay Thai, kick boxing, boxing, wrestling, some types of Karate etc. Helped me a lot. Not only the obvious (getting ripped/in shape, confidence boost, positive effects on the brain from exercising) and blowing off some excess ADHD energy, but as an introverted nerd you learn how to keep stable eye contact and you stop being irrationally afraid of conflicts. It has made me much calmer as a person, and I don't have any burst of rage anymore. Cannot stress enough how much this has helped my career and at softening the symptoms of both ADHD and Asperger's. 6) Healthy sleeping patterns & diet. Without this, I can fall asleep in meetings (and have done it numerous times). 7) If you work at a company where you have the ability to skip meetings you deem are unnecessary - use it! The less bored you are, the more likely you are to be able to focus and not procrastinate, I think. 8) I like getting out of the office during lunch, just to get some air/sunlight/short change of environment. Feels like I'm less bored when I get back to my desk. 9) If I'm taking on a bit too big of a task, I try to break it down into subtasks because otherwise I get bored and start to procrastinate. I need very clearly defined units of work to work efficiently. |
This 1000x. I try to keep a pool of those kind of tasks when I can't concentrate on my main task so I still feel like I'm making some progress. It's helped a lot.