[webmaven]

> That's ADHD (maybe modulo some external factors like scattered meetings)

That doesn't seem like ADHD to me. Getting to a super-productive flow state is notoriously difficult to do reliably for everyone, and getting stuck on a stupid typo you can't find even though you know it is somewhere in the 50 lines of code you're looking at is likewise a fairly common experience.

Folks with ADHD may actually be better at achieving a hyperfocused state of flow, but the flip side of that isn't hunting for a typo, it is falling down a rabbit hole of yak-shaving, procrastination (productive or otherwise), and other distractions.

Somewhere in between is the experience of trying to hold more and more context in your head at once, resulting in a feeling like your brain has been pummeled and leaking out your ears, staring at some code that has become entirely illegible. This can be the result of ADHD-driven yak-shaving, but more commonly is the result of needing to comprehend huge chunks of a badly architected system before you can make a change with any confidence.

[webmaven]

Coming back to this comment after a few days, I find that what I was trying to say with the last bit is that yak-shaving can be either intrinsic (ADHD) or extrinsic (badly architected, deeply intertwingled code with leaky abstractions).