[torben-friis]

>I eventually discovered that the adrenaline response from extreme stress ('if I don't get this fucking thing done by 7:30am I'm fired' kind of thing) allows me to lock in and do the thing.

I went the other way. I knew from the start that this "trick" helped me work. It took until my 30s to learn that that's ADHD and that I can skip the stress with medication. God knows how many years of life I've robbed myself of with the stress spikes.

[SmellTheGlove]

Yep, same, except I was like 40. Couldn't believe it took me that long.

[butlike]

For me, the side effects of the medication are intolerable. I wish there was a way to get that starting impulse without stimulants or SNRIs which kill my libido

[torben-friis]

If it helps, another trick I used to use was external help. As in, calling a colleague and starting in pair programming or simply discussing or whatever. Having eyes on me had the same effect as the looming deadline without the stress.

You have to learn to be super trigger happy with it, otherwise you fall in the trap of 'I've been inactive for too long, I can't call and reveal that I haven't started'.

[CaptWillard]

> 'I've been inactive for too long, I can't call and reveal that I haven't started'.

Dang. That's a huge part of my problem over the years. Nicely articulated.

[Terr_]

A phrase I've heard is to "put it into existence."

By sharing the idea with somebody else, even just communicating your intention, it becomes partially reified, better-anchored to things outside yourself.

[orphea]

  that I can skip the stress with medication

You're lucky. In many countries any helpful ADHD medication is illegal.

[torben-friis]

Yes, I agree, I'm lucky that legality was never a concern.

I'm covered by public healthcare so access to medication is stable and costs literal cents. My only complain is that ADHD is not at all known here so it took time and luck to get a diagnosis, because the possibility wasn't in my radar.

It was a surprise to visit London recently and see the amount of ADHD-related ads everywhere (books,clinics, etc).

[121789]

interesting. the meds help me in many ways, but often I still need that activation energy to kick things off

[wafflemaker]

>interesting. the meds help me in many ways, but often I still need that activation energy to kick things off

Similar problem here. ADHD meds have different thresholds for allievation of ADHD symptoms and for negative effects.

Usually the bigger the dose, the more symptoms allievated, but the higher the chance of side effects.

In my specific case, methylphenidate had too much side effects, but was the one that helped the most with focus/task prioritization/task recall.

Lisdextroamphetamine on the other hand has much less side effects (sweating, emotional detachment), but doesn't help that much with task recall and prioritization. But still helps with anxiety, emotional deregulation (being too emotional, too fast, over non issues and taking long to calm down) and general focus/working memory.

Funny that people talk here about looking at ADHD more like executive function disorder. Because I first came upon that idea in Thomas E. Browns video seminars. And he wrote a book on that in 2005 - Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults.

I actually used material from his book, Outside the Box: Rethinking ADD/ADHD in Children and Adults, to help get diagnosed. I already had one negative diagnosis behind me. And in that book Brown has a lot on clinical requirements for diagnosis) and how research data shows that it's wrong.

He also has books on high functioning ADHD+ASD, like Smart but Stuck and ADHD and Asperger Syndrome in Smart Kids and Adults: Twelve Stories of Struggle, Support, and Treatment. Tho the last two are more about using specific cases as examples of how you don't have to be "stupid" to have ADHD. Because to quote the first diagnostician, "you sure do have a lot of ADHD symptoms, but I've never seen anybody with ADHD who has such high scores on the iq tests". Too bad that being good at guessing a pattern in a picture doesn't correspond to life success.