| > How long did it take you to get to this point? And how do you deal/ identify/ know you are “done”? It took me around three to four years after starting medication to get to this point. The "done" part comes out of setting and meeting realistic and prioritized goals. If I've done that part right, then I can feel OK about stepping away. How to set those goals is the harder part. Tasks with time-constraints have to be identified and dealt with, such as "prep for meeting with product team." Identifying them means looking ahead on the calendar (not always easy for ADHD'ers!), and getting out of ADHD magical thinking about "just needing a few minutes before" to prep sufficiently. That might mean scheduling a half hour block for prep on the calendar. As a bonus, being aware of what's coming up next is always a good thing. Open-ended tasks and independent work are harder to clarify and prioritize, but I got the greatest reward when I started attempting to describe what I was doing at my team's daily standup meetings. I might be spending weeks on writing some document, which can feel endlessly the same, but I force myself to not have the update everyday be "worked on the document," but rather: > I researched topic X and spoke to people A, B and C to try and answer this question I had, and learned this thing or > finished drafting section X, editing section Y and started on section Z Then it becomes much easier to keep track of the longer journey through writing that document. In addition, writing the description for other people helps make that easier. Breaking the description down also helps you notice when you're stuck, because your daily descriptions start to sound the same. If you notice that sameness, but then ask yourself "if I say _____ today, what will I be able to say that's different tomorrow" then automatically you'll start to get more specific, have better updates, pace yourself better, and as a bonus you have an idea of what you'll do the next day. Using the above tactics, I started to use standups to pace myself and feel better about my work (more "done"), whereas I used to become full of anxiety and guilt for not feeling like I could report "progress" day over day. It was all a mindset shift. |