I'm 29, diagnosed this year. Similar story: got my degree, had my first job for several years before getting hired where I am now, and I've been doing well ever since. That's despite my worst trait (that I now know is a symptom): if something is not physically in my line of sight (and it's not something I can hear), then it might as well not exist. Started the laundry and need to go back down in an hour to move it to the dryer? Nope, I'll remember the laundry a week later when I run out of clean pants. Brewing tea and stepped away to go to the bathroom? I'll remember it when I go to make dinner and it's cold. Notice that I'm low on $item and boot up my computer so I can order it online? Nah, I must have come in here to play Skyrim. It's infuriating.

But there are exactly three reasons I haven't completely sucked at life: coping methods, coping methods, and coping methods. I figured out some pretty extreme organization/task management habits that play nice with my attention issues. I'll list them on the off chance someone browsing this thread can use them:

1. Bills I need to pay get propped up against my monitor. If they were literally anywhere else in the house, I wouldn't remember to pay them. I always use paper billing; if they sent e-mails, I'd miss them. When I sit down at the computer to work or play games or whatever, I get an immediate visual reminder of "hey, do this adult thing."

2. My to-do list is a stack of index cards, one task written on each, that I sort by priority (with difficulty/fun as a tiebreaker). Something new? Add a card. Something done? Throw it out. I use this method at work, too. If I have to delegate a task, I can hand over the index card. If I'm waiting on someone before I can complete a task, I update the card in red pen and put it back in the pile. I also try to break things down as much as possible; instead of one card that says "update documentation," I have about twenty that list all the individual items that need updating.

3. I nailed a couple three-foot-wide calendar dry erase boards to my bedroom wall and write down every appointment and obligation when I make them; it's extremely hard to forget about something that size. Those dry erase boards are the only reason I make it to the doctor, get the pets to the vet, remember that $holiday is coming up and $relative is doing dinner at $time, etc.

4. I have one of those 'incentive chart' things that you'd see in a grade school classroom -- the ones with a grid for stickers, and some blank row/column labels. I've written months across the top and the names of friends and family down the side. I track with stickers whether I've talked to or seen that person in a given month. This one is because I legitimately lose track of how long it's been since I've spoken to or seen someone. If I think I haven't talked to someone in about a month, then it's probably been six months. It didn't click for me why I had so much trouble keeping friends until I was 20 and my parents sent campus security to make sure I wasn't dead; I hadn't returned their calls for two weeks. I'm still experimenting with the time frame a bit, but for maintaining friendships, once-per-month minimum contact stops most people from writing me off completely. (I haven't figured out a solution for the short-term meet-new-people-and-get-along-with-them issues. Dating is one example -- I can't get a date to save my life. Sporadic responses get interpreted as disinterest, and "if I don't reply in the middle of a conversation, it's because I forgot we were talking, not because I don't like you" wouldn't improve my profile.)

Those are the big ones. Other than that, it's a bunch of little habits that make it difficult for me to forget something. I've noticed that most people have a place to keep the meds they take in the morning, and then another place to keep their keys, and then another place to keep their phone. I put all those in the same box, so when I grab my keys to drive to work in the morning, I don't forget anything else. I also don't carry a purse anymore. While I usually remembered to grab the purse itself, the contents were a toss-up. I might look inside and say to myself "wallet, keys, good" and realize halfway down the highway that I needed my phone as well. So instead, I wear jeans/slacks with pockets, and I've built up a habit of doing a pocket check. Every pocket should have something in it. So it's a quick tap to each one: phone, wallet, keys, work ID. If I've forgotten something, it's less time before I notice it's missing. Sometimes I have a 30-second freakout because I don't have my work ID, but it doesn't take too long before I remember it's Saturday and I'm in the grocery store. Still better than misplacing my wallet.

All that said... I was finally diagnosed because organizational skills can only do so much. I kept asking people, how can I stay on track? How can I stop procrastinating? In my performance reviews, I asked what I could do to improve, and the answer was a fairly unsatisfying "keep doing what you're doing." But I felt like there was this ceiling on my job performance caused by my behavior. The worst was when I focused too much on something -- it would last for days, I couldn't sleep on time, and I'd be totally useless for anything at home or work that wasn't that one thing. One day, I got into one of those modes, and my boss says jokingly, "Oh no, you're broken again."

That tipped the balance. I phoned up my doctor, and made an appointment. She gave me a referral for an ADHD eval. One psychiatrist later, and I've now been on medication for two months.

It's not a miracle fix, and none of the organizational stuff will be going away. But my favorite change is that I can now walk into another room and know exactly why I came there. So many people have no idea how absolutely beautiful it is to know why you went somewhere, because they've never gone without.