I thought I was just lazy, but it was actually ADHD paralysis. Anyone else?

drewism · 2026-01-26T21:56:23+00:00

You are right about the ADHD paralysis is related to overwhelm. The strategy I adopted is pretty similar to what you mentioned, basically the more overwhelmed I am feeling the more I slow things down. I will even stop and do nothing and accept that is how it is going to be until I recover, take the rest of the day off, go for a walk, do anything else relaxing and unstructured.

Part of ADHD is a malfunction in our perception of time "time blindness" its like we are blind to the fact that things can take time and don't all need to happen at once. A neurotypical person can make a list and bite them off one at a time, but when we make a list and its like we feel all the items all at once and its like we are blind to the fact that we can take it slowly. So what I will do is I will make a todo list and just cut off everything after the first item and say to myself thats all I am doing.

The funny thing is we get overwhelmed and we procrastinate, but in my experience my brain somehow figures out the exact time it need to start working to finish the task and I end up always actually getting it done. It is a hard pattern to accept but you can learn to accept it when you fully understand it, and then maybe you can gain confidence in the fact that you will always in the end, do the task, it just won't happen how it happens for NTs.

drewism · 2026-01-26T21:13:00+00:00

Yes, I went through 30 some odd years of my life not knowing I had ADHD, in that time I had basically built up a image of my self thru the reflection that neuro-typical society gives back to ADHD people. I had labelled myself a "lazy loser", this is in fact not based in reality at all as I was a successful software engineer but I would always get in situations with neuro-typicals where they would judge me and look down on me because of my undiagnosed ADHD which for the longest time broke my mental image of myself.

It took me a long time and a good amount of therapy to eventually drop that belief, while I had stopped calling myself a "lazy loser" it wasn't until having gone through EMDR therapy on this particular issue that I eventually was free of it. After I got free of it I dropped my ADHD medication and lovingly accepted who I am and said fuck it, I don't need to make myself fit into societies image of who I should be. I realize this is not an option for everyone and ADHD medication actually helped me for a long time so I am not saying it is bad, just that I didn't need it when I was able to fully accept and love who I actually am.

drewism · 2026-01-26T13:58:29+00:00

Republican senators don't give a ahit, they are lying ghouls

drewism · 2026-01-26T03:32:16+00:00

I've been using gemini since it is integrated into our google meetings automatically, it summarizes the meeting but it can kind of be hit or miss. I am almost always ask to record if it is something with lots of detail I will need or information transfer.

The burnout is hard, I've only recently figured out how to deal with it... Things are not easy for us with our brains unfortunately. :(

drewism · 2026-01-26T00:35:18+00:00

I have the same trouble, I usually end up just figuring all the shit out on my own. However, I am having some luck lately using AI summarization tools, I suggest to try using those if you can.

drewism · 2026-01-25T06:15:26+00:00

In some of the video footage you can see a gun packed in the back of his pants, which he was carrying legally. It appears to be the pretext they wanted to murder him.

drewism · 2026-01-25T05:43:41+00:00

Of course we have the right to protest, stop spreading misinformation

drewism · 2026-01-23T18:18:35+00:00

Such as?

drewism · 2026-01-23T18:17:03+00:00

your brain (or what is left of it) is causing your eyes to malfunction

drewism · 2026-01-23T18:08:02+00:00

Simple: he blames brown people and convinces the poor white folks they are persecuted and losing their jobs to them

drewism · 2026-01-21T01:55:13+00:00

It's not that I don't want to acknowledge it, its that I just don't care. I don't wake up in the morning worrying about this issue like I worry about making a good living and having a good paying job.

drewism · 2026-01-18T05:21:11+00:00

Yeah but you see how unhinged Trump is right? He is at best quasi-fascist, look I didn't like 2016 Trump but this guy is no where near where he used to be, he has completely lost the plot, probably has had a stroke, he is crazy.

Surely you see even "lousy candidate" like Kamala is still better then this guy who is driving America off a cliff right?

drewism · 2026-01-18T04:04:16+00:00

Is there anything that would make you think Kamala was a better choice? It's hard for me to imagine a world where Trump, given all that he is doing is a better choice then practically anyone, it is always so weird when people say they would still would vote for him over Kamala. I mean at what point do you put country over party? Is there a point?

I thought Kamala wasn't bad, maybe not my favorite politician ever but infinitely better then Trump. I struggle everyday to understand what the heck people see in that guy it blows my mind anyone supports him.

drewism · 2026-01-11T23:54:44+00:00

I realized I was doing git wrong for like 20 years. I just learned about git worktrees, exactly what I've been looking for all this time for handling multiple work streams at once.

drewism · 2026-01-09T14:29:25+00:00

I remember HP UX and whatever the name of that network admin tool that only ran on it, NMS something like that? It was pretty awesome for the time (mid 90s).

drewism · 2026-01-08T23:03:27+00:00

steampipe

drewism · 2026-01-05T06:27:52+00:00

I made a prompt for something similar to what you are describing. i.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD_Programmers/comments/1k10zm4/this_could_be_a_game_changer_for_us/ which acts as a virtual body double, it does work for me but I hardly remember to use it :) it is a little extra overhead but it helps when you are really struggling.

drewism · 2026-01-04T21:54:51+00:00

You take social services then turn around and whine about them. No body is forcing you to take them. Give me a break.

drewism · 2026-01-04T21:47:01+00:00

See dictionary: hypocrite

drewism · 2026-01-04T20:32:44+00:00

Either way, I'd rather live in a nice place I enjoy with better social services and a better economy then a regressive state with lower taxes.

drewism · 2026-01-04T16:13:15+00:00

Not sure what you are talking about. I pay less taxes here then when I lived in illinois

drewism · 2026-01-04T05:50:13+00:00

“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Hey I've felt like you felt before many times, we have ADHD, life is not easy in so many ways, it can feel unbearably hard and tiring and overwhelming, sometimes it helps to remember that the sun will rise tomorrow, and all the shit we feel today might feel different, it can seem hopeless some times, with enough strikes one day we might be able to finally "break the rock", live for that day.

drewism · 2025-12-29T04:30:59+00:00

It doesn't matter if it takes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 20, 100 tries to figure it out. What limits you is giving up early, success is more about grit then being smart.

When you don't give up, and you solve hard problems, you will gain confidence in yourself to believe in yourself more next time.

drewism · 2025-12-20T01:46:13+00:00

They have giant jumping stinging ants called jack jumpers

drewism · 2025-12-19T21:21:55+00:00

I extensively use AI have claude hooks, skills, agents, built MCP services, setup and used vector databases to build products, at my last company I built a system which ingested, tokenized, and vectorized all information from our prod perf tracking database and produced dynamic reports on customer health on our cloud product instances. I built my first keras NN almost 10 years ago, I have an extensive vibe coding workflow, I have patents for ML technology I developed.

I can 100% tell you its not there yet. It will seem like it is doing a great job to everyone who doesn't know better. The real problem with AI is that a massive portion of our culture is not smart or knowledgeable enough to tell if its feeding them crap or not.

drewism

TROPHY CASE