[jakedata]

I turned my college career around by studying when I was alert instead of trying to force a "normal" study schedule. The 3 hours from 2:30 AM to 5:30 AM were the golden hours. When the music started playing in my head it was time to go back to sleep.

Can you flex your work hours so that they align with the times that you are able to focus on technical tasks? 30 years later I still get productive things done in the wee small hours of the morning. I save the afternoon for more brute force activities.

[eurasiantiger]

You have ADD. Source: I have ADD.

[adoga]

Curious what "mild" ADD looks like?

I've not necessarily had issues impacting my life but can be very forgetful (top of the stack always takes priority) which drives my wife crazy, and I often describe my work as "loading up for a few days to do a weeks worth of work in a 3-hour flow session" (which has worked well for me).

[rtchau]

The problem is that ADHD (and its related disorders) can't really be measured (on a scale from 1 to 10, for example).

In reality, it's like a color wheel or a spiderweb chart of different symptoms/characteristics/idiosyncrasies, only said wheel/chart also has a depth component. There are so many nuances of behavior/habit and crossover with other disorders (depression, anxiety, oppositional/defiant disorder) as well as going hand in hand with much nicer stuff (creativity, introspectivity, intelligence etc).

When I was diagnosed, someone I knew scoffed at me and said "no way, I know a girl with ADHD and she's bouncing off walls, you don't have ADHD" and have known other people to say outright that it's a load of crap and is made up etc.

It's just... Not. That. Simple.

What I do know for sure is that since being diagnosed (10 years ago, at 31), and commencing medication, things turned around in a colossal way. Medication doesn't fix ADHD, it just helps break down that motiviational wall that makes it hard to just start. For me at least. For you, or the next person, it might help in different/more ways.

Long story short, mild ADHD is a little hard to characterise, because at the "mild" end, there can be a bunch of other factors making you distractible/unmotivated (health, diet, relationships, job dissatisfaction etc).

If you're in any doubt, just go start a conversation with your doctor and go from there. If you're trying to spot specific behaviours, look at the number of unfinished or abandoned "pet projects", degree of procrastination, poor impulse control... those were the red flags for me. Your mileage may vary.

[user_7832]

I agree a lot of this sounds like ad(h)d. It’s odd how undiagnosed it can be. There was another ask HN thread with the OP having major ad(h)d symptoms, to me (I’m lso adhd) it’s almost painfully obvious there’s executive function issues.