I do a little bit of a lot of things. Some of those things are code. I enjoy thinking about how the world and technology interact, and how technology affects the way people interact with each other.
This is an awesome series to see, especially for someone with ADHD. What you've written so far is spot on!
I have a few things that I have found useful that might help others, and I thought I should share.
I found that the biggest factor for me in managing my attention was understanding how my diet and activity level interplay with my ability to concentrate. I found that caffeine and refined sugars are both huge triggers to scatterbrain and inability start tasks and stay on them, so I cut them out. Also, more consistent meals of higher quality food allows me to maintain focus for longer periods than before. This kind of flies in the face of common business thinking though, since coffee is so pervasive in most office cultures and most people are too busy to focus on eating well, so they get what they can when they can and the food quality is usually lower than if they prepared it themselves. For activity, something as simple as a mid-day fast walk or bike ride, or anything else that gets my heart rate up, has a drastic effect on my productivity in the afternoon. something about letting out some of the nervous energy maybe? I have alarms set now to remind me to get up and move around.
It took me years to understand this and others might not agree, but I have a certain time of day that I'll be the most productive and able to think deeply, and it's actually later in the day and into the evening. For me, this is when my brain starts to get tired and for some reason this also equates to less scattered. If I haven't fried my brain all day at work, I can write some awesome code in the hours just before bed.
Yes! Diet and exercise can be very helpful - maybe eventually I'll figure out how to consistently feed myself the way I want to and stick to an exercise schedule. 🙃
You'll be happy to see "lean into how your brain wants to focus" in the next blog in the series. 😉
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This is an awesome series to see, especially for someone with ADHD. What you've written so far is spot on!
I have a few things that I have found useful that might help others, and I thought I should share.
I found that the biggest factor for me in managing my attention was understanding how my diet and activity level interplay with my ability to concentrate. I found that caffeine and refined sugars are both huge triggers to scatterbrain and inability start tasks and stay on them, so I cut them out. Also, more consistent meals of higher quality food allows me to maintain focus for longer periods than before. This kind of flies in the face of common business thinking though, since coffee is so pervasive in most office cultures and most people are too busy to focus on eating well, so they get what they can when they can and the food quality is usually lower than if they prepared it themselves. For activity, something as simple as a mid-day fast walk or bike ride, or anything else that gets my heart rate up, has a drastic effect on my productivity in the afternoon. something about letting out some of the nervous energy maybe? I have alarms set now to remind me to get up and move around.
It took me years to understand this and others might not agree, but I have a certain time of day that I'll be the most productive and able to think deeply, and it's actually later in the day and into the evening. For me, this is when my brain starts to get tired and for some reason this also equates to less scattered. If I haven't fried my brain all day at work, I can write some awesome code in the hours just before bed.
Hopefully someone else finds this useful.
Yes! Diet and exercise can be very helpful - maybe eventually I'll figure out how to consistently feed myself the way I want to and stick to an exercise schedule. 🙃
You'll be happy to see "lean into how your brain wants to focus" in the next blog in the series. 😉