Most responses here are about systems and tools — which help, but they're compensations working around the issue rather than at it.
The underlying problem is network regulation in the brain. Your Default Mode Network (the self-referential mind-wandering system) is supposed to quiet down when you engage in tasks. In ADHD, that toggle is unreliable — the DMN keeps intruding, which is why you get that "barrage of micro ideas" breaking through during focus.
A few things that work at the root:
Meditation — not as a relaxation tool, but as direct neuroplasticity training. Focused attention practice (noticing when your mind wandered, returning to object) is literally thousands of reps training that DMN/task-positive toggle. Long-term meditators show measurably better DMN suppression during tasks.
Sleep — DMN regulation degrades hard with poor sleep. Non-negotiable foundation.
The deeper move is changing your relationship to the thoughts themselves. The DMN will always generate ideas. The shift is recognizing them as arisings rather than commands. They still come — they just lose their grip.
I have no idea if this will be useful to you, because it's so contingent on my caffeine sensitivity, my sleep, whether or not I've taken Vyvanse, what time of day it is, and what mental tasks I need to perform.
But to give a real answer:
On workdays I have about 20-40 fl oz of coffee during the morning. I stop all stimulants at noon so I can sleep.
On non-workdays I have 1-3 normal sized mugs of coffee in the morning, just because I like it.
Lisdexamfetamine, it’s very similar to Adderall but more expensive as it comes in capsules instead of tablets, but the upside is it lasts all day instead of a few hours. It recently became generic in the US, but is still around $60-120 a month’s supply (at least at my dosage), vs $25 or so for a month of Adderall.
I have adhd, I write them down. Some of them are great ideas, some are shit.
I got diagnosed at 29. Up until then I was very entrepreneurial and ambitious, constantly working on business ideas. Hell I taught myself software engineering because I had a single idea I hyper focused on lol.
The way I see it, lean into it. ADHD is a double edged sword - you get intrusive thoughts, some of them are bad, but some of them are ideas.
You can’t really change your brain, you can take medication and it might help you focus a bit more.
But I say lean into it. I’ve had several successful ventures from pure ADHD fuelled idea binges.
I don’t really switch off, but I make sure I work in the office every day because being around people helps.
But when I’m alone it’s a barrage of thoughts, some days more intense than others.
First of all if you have the money get an official diagnosis. While self diagnosis is often right, ADHD symptoms can have overlap with many other things so it is better to be sure.
Now want a quick fix? If you can, get medication. It doesn't work for all people with ADHD but for those that it does it will give you the most bang for the buck.
Now there is coping strategies. Therapists can help a lot. There is also people offering ADHD coaching. This is great because the coaches tend to have ADHD themselves and understand you. It helped me personally a lot but be warned that everyone can offer coaching so quality may wary.
Last part is lifestyle. Sport. It is not optional. Running is amazing and will help you a lot but if you are not fit enough yet, walk. Walk every day for at least 30min. You need to. Also personally for me reading a physical book for at least 30min a day makes a huge, huge difference. Diet is important but what works varies from ADHD person to person. For me cutting out processed sugar was a good step.
Also no caffeine. This may also vary but completely cutting it helped me personally a lot. Yes, it helps somewhat with executive function but only in the short term and does more harm than good in the long term. Generally any form form of self medication be it alcohol, weed and so on, cut it out. Again get proper medication if you can.
Honestly accepting that you have ADHD or well at least some form of neurodivergency is already the biggest step. It gets so much easier once you learn how to properly manage it.
Came across this a few months ago on HN here and there’s a fair bit of exposition on things you’ve mentioned. My personal takeaway from it was to try Todoist, which has been a complete game changer in my life. I’ve used other systems before but something about Todoist worked better for my brain (plus the mobile integration is awesome… my second best over the years was org-mode but the mobile story is way too clunky)
It's hard. I take concerta and have been laid off or fired more times than most people I know in long-term employment have had jobs. I take Concerta and drink Coffee, but I mostly just enjoy the coffee. It's really hard to stay on track sometimes, it's really hard to go too long without working on something inherently interesting to me. I'm constantly late and prefer late nights, I tend to always have a bad sleep cycle.
Really basic things that other people seem good at, I struggle. Taxes, finances, anything that requires ambient awareness of systems that have no clear feedback loops. Sometimes penalties for trivial things accumulate and it costs a lot of money. Goals, unless they're something like literally climbing a mountain, don't really motivate me. I don't have any financial or life goals at all, they seem artificial and silly.
Without stimulants, and a thankfully somewhat lenient company/client atm, I'd be screwed.
The positive is that I seem to be much better at making friends than most other people I know, and enjoy a variety of interesting hobbies. I'm also not that fearful or anxious about trying new things.
In terms of who I listen to about the topic, it's certainly not any entrepreneur types, it's mostly friends. Though Trevor Noah has a great podcast on the topic last April
Additionally, I cope by exclusion. I don't obligate myself to many things or events, and refuse to participate in group chats. I keep almost no notifications on, and people know that if they need my attention, they can just call me, otherwise I won't respond until I get around to it. I only buy gifts when I find inspiration to, and try not to spread myself too thin.
I also try to avoid easy things as much as possible. I failed at easy assignments, easy exams in school, why bother going through the rote motions for no other purpose than to be measured on my performance in doing them?
Instead of having a million different tabs open, use a tab session manager, save the stuff you want to read later, and keep open only stuff pertinent to things you are working on.
Prioritize your projects to have actionable goals.
When you procrastinate, try to do so by being productive on smaller projects.
Be aware of your own nature, and try to exert control over it. Recognize that not every idea or desire is useful, and learn to discard the ones that are not and investigate or give more attention to the ones that are.
Organization, take notes and organize them. I often have a scratchpad textfile open, that I then organize into sections (e.g. app ideas, ideas for specific code projects, movie ideas, whatever), break these up further into project or topic files. The ones that grow and get fleshed out are the ones worth pursuing.
Have a healthy sleep and recreation routine to not get burned out.
Leaning a little into the the distractions, and building processes to quickly search and hop between things had made it better for me.
At the very least opening tabs with Ctrl+T, tab search with Ctrl+Shift+A, quickly closing them with Ctrl+W is my main workflow in Chrome-based browsers.
Once I get my speed up, I find distractions don't occur as often.
Emacs, org-mode, magit, and AI, combined with good sleep, weight lifting, stimulants, have almost completey nullified my ADHD problems.
I have a few text files open at any one time. One is for a diary I keep, which changes for each month, so for example at the moment I have '2026 01.txt' open. I have a general to-do file and a tech todo file, and then notes.txt. When my notex.txt grows too long, which I define as having to scroll at all, I start to break it up.
When I break it up, I personally use latex files. I know everyone loves markdown, but I'm not a fan of Obsidian (closed source and electron, ugh), so I fell in love with TexStudio.
I have keybindings for simple macros to insert sections and subsections that I can quickly name, and these display in the navigation tree very well. TexStudio also allows multiple tex files open at once with a tabbedinterface, and allows saving sessions, so I can open one file to open all my, say, 'ai app ideas' notes. I've found this to work better for myself than any other available app or solution.
Eventually, I'd like to release a fork which would mainly be trimming stuff out rather than really adding anything in, but it's far from a priority for me at the moment.
I have so many text files (technically wikis and GDocs text docs, but I'm not doing more than lines of text). I was talking to a coworker today about our graveyard of pen and paper notebooks, todo apps, reminder thingies, post-its..
I need two things: ubiquity, so that I can add ideas, todos, etc. wherever I am; and exaggerated simplicity so that I don't end up turning the note solution into its own project that's abandoned or exchanged in a year.
I'm also curious what others' takes are too. Lately I have found myself completely unable to remember things without writing them down or completely losing focus on a task and instead going off on "side quests." A close friend familiar with ADHD hinted that I probably have "late developing ADHD" and advised that I get evaluated/diagnosed.
The thought of that kind of scares me---I'm in my late 20s and tend to think I have functioned my whole life without needing any kind of coping strategy or technique to keep myself on top of my work, but now I am facing the possibility that I might just have to start doing things differently, and I'm not sure where to start.
Aside from actually getting diagnosed, are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?
There are some really good suggestions in this thread: sleep, exercise, medication. Therapy also helps some.
Externalizing my brain helped massively before I was diagnosed. Pages and pages of notes -- both to write an idea down to move away from it and as a way to make sure I do a task. It's way easier for me to accomplish something if I can obsessively plan it out in advance, and it's way easier to stop rolling an idea around in my head if I jot it down (potentially to be never entertained again.)
It's a later step after diagnosis, but my doctor told me I'd be surprised at how effective medication can be. They were 100% right. It's not a cure all and it's not without potential side effects, but it makes me sad that it took me so long to approach my primary doctor about the issues.
But as a side note, the medical info I've read makes a pretty firm statement that there is no late developing ADHD. One if the diagnostic criteria is that the symptoms occurred during childhood. Coping and your environment may affect the disorder's effect on your life, but it's with you for your life. _However_, adult diagnosis is very real. Your environment changes so much as you age, and it may or may not make ADHD worse. I'd talk to your primary doctor with an open mind, both for what may be going on and for how to deal with it.
Carefully consider your environment. I perform best with very little going on around me. In my physical environment and on my PC. Austere. Minimize things that catch your brain and eye. One or two apps at a time, close everything else. Pick your one more important thing every day and work on that. It needs to be a contract. Usually you have one or two important things to be doing and you can ignore everything else without too much consequence.
To remember things you need an ironclad todo system that lets you very quickly capture anything you need to remember. You need to be able to record, triage, filter, prioritize, and execute on anything you need to remember. If any one of those stages is leaky you won't trust it and it won't last. My entire life is structured around managing it. I have to have very strong discipline. House must be spotless. Desk must be spotless. Try to work in the same place at the same time every day. Environmental and contextual stability is huge. Your brain must associate a particular desk, chair, place with doing the most important things. If you allow yourself to goof off or do other things in that place you are losing the fight.
Working out fixes a lot for me too. I workout or my mood and motivation falls apart. Move or die. Again, consistency is key. Everything I do around environment is to reduce the need to use executive function. It is finite and fickle for people with ADHD. The more you have to think and convince yourself to do things the less likely you are to do them. You need consistent cues. "Sit down here, start timer, means work on main thing and nothing else." If you can have discipline at all of these external things, the work can just happen and there is a kind of freedom in that.
Program outlets. Give yourself set, specific time to explore the sidetracking. Don't tell your brain no. Tell it "later". It helps if you know there is time for the extra thoughts. That there is a relief valve.
Also, drugs. I use prescribed stimulants. There are some unpleasant negative things, but I can function with them and life is better with them. But it isn't some magical cure. You still have to be organized and willing to work on your tasks or you will just be really focused on things you don't really need to be doing.
I could write so much more, but that is some top of mind stuff that I think sits at the top of my hierarchy of being productive. Oh and you may need to have some conversations with future you. How is future you, a week, month, year from now going to feel if you burned a lot of time on side quests?
You’re not alone a lot of founders and builders experience this ADHD-like pattern: intense curiosity, deep focus, then idea overload. Your brain is optimized for exploration, not maintenance, which is why vision comes easy and follow-through feels hard. What helps is having one place to dump ideas, time-boxing deep work, offloading admin, and keeping tools minimal. Switching off is still tough, but physical activity, hard stop routines, and accepting rest as part of productivity make a real difference.
I take your hedging to mean you are probably self diagnosing. It's worth talking to a doctor and getting the ball rolling on a formal diagnosis. ADHD is not the only diagnosis with those symptoms. For instance bipolar and autism spectrum disorder. Again, not a doctor, take that with a grain of salt.
There are probably new tactics you can adopt in this thread, and they may help and are worth trying. Advice which is actionable today is valuable. But if this is severe enough to disrupt your life, the best strategy is a combination of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes (eg exercise).
Easier said than done, I know. I have my own issues I'm struggling with and I get it. I'm in the midst of trying that same three pronged approach.
Please also understand that these diagnosis do not all have the same consequences for not treating them. If you don't want to pursue formal diagnosis and treatment, that is your right, but I would urge you to investigate whether or not you are bipolar in any case. If you have your first manic episode, and you don't understand that is what is happening, it could be dangerous. What you're describing sounds more like ADHD to me personally but is not inconsistent with hypomania either. Again, not a doctor, grain of salt.
Note that if you ever want to be a pilot, THINK VERY HARD BEFORE GETTING DIAGNOSED OR MEDICATED. This doesn't apply to most people, but it is the major gotcha on an otherwise straightforward decision.
/r/flying is full of people who wish they didn't have this in their medical record. The FAA is totally backwards about medical stuff and has a very dim view towards ADHD & associated meds.
I'm disappointed to acknowledge you have a point. Shame on the FAA for pushing people into the closet with this.
If one did want to become a pilot, I do think it would be critical to determine whether or not they were prone to manic episodes. That really could be very dangerous to a pilot and their crew, passengers, etc.
Also, from my 15 minutes of preliminary research, I don't think that applies to pilots of ultralights. So if your dream is simply to fly, it's still achievable.
1/ Chose a career as a Data Scientist, which benefits from intense focus.
2/ All the thoughts and tasks that i get in my head, if tasks are small, i try to do some of them immediately. Otherwise, i write it down, and keep a sticky which i close at the end of the day.
3/ Am 40, I have a partner, who has slowly realized that i am different, and since the past few years she coaches me to do tasks i dont like (submit expense reports). I happily give her pocket shopping money in exchange.
4/ I take notes at every meeting, Notion is my tool.
5/ Switching off, what's that? I realize my teams think that i am a maniac, and my wife thinks am too obsessed. I help my team do things, and tell them i can come across as too hot, and they need to let me to know to backoff. I like to watch movies, and do take a break from time to time.
What quietened the “thousands of competing thoughts” that used to go through my brain constantly was an ADHD diagnosis and then medication (methylphenidate / Concerta XL in my case, I tried lisdexamfetamine / Elvanse first but it did nothing for my ADHD symptoms. Everyone responds differently to the various medications, you may have to try several until you find one that works for you).
The diagnosis/medication route isn’t for everyone but, in my case, it is a thousand times better than trying any systems/strategies unmedicated.
Medication alone isn’t a magical cure but it gets me to the point where various systems/strategies do start to work.
Also whilst medicated I don’t get as distracted anywhere near as easily. If I do think of something else I can write it down and go back to what I was working on.
Whilst medicated I don’t try and keep track of 4 different conversations going on around me whilst not giving enough attention to the actual person I’m supposed to be listening to and talking to.
Whilst medicated I don’t just endlessly write, rewrite or reorder TODO lists, I can actually start (and finish!) items on that list. This means I’m not just motivated by stress/deadlines, I can get things done way ahead of the last minute.
An ADHD diagnosis and medication has been utterly transformational in my life.
I tried a whole host of stuff in the years before I finally went for an official diagnosis. In hindsight I wish I’d spoken to my doctor years earlier but, guess what, people with ADHD procrastinate.
Lastly, I now no longer have to expend huge amounts of energy masking my ADHD symptoms. Prior to diagnosis I didn’t realise just how much of a toll this was taking on me and I just attributed it to 25 years of working in the IT industry and possible burnout.
I’m not diagnosed but have a high correlation condition (APD) which explains my inattentive ADHD ways that only my closest people basically knew were there the whole time.
After reading a book about APD, I felt like I was reading reports written about my life. I told my late wife’s best friend and she was like “she knew the whole time, you drove her crazy sometimes”. I was blissfully ignorant.
I drink a lot of coffee as a baseline and have since high school. I’m afraid of stimulant drugs and won’t pursue them.
The one thing that I love that truly changed my life for the better is running. I started at 45 after a series of really awful events. I’ve never felt such a clarity of mind and feeling.
I wish I had known about it in my teens. I went through alot of shitty times without understanding why. Life moved on, but I wasted alot of opportunity and missed some things that I regret a bit.
Run (or bike or whatever gets you) and get to know yourself. Know what you want, and when you embark on a side quest, stop and see if you are going where you want to be.
You might be right, but until you get a professional diagnosis you can't really be sure. Hacker-news will disagree but it is impossible to be objective about your own mental health. The good news is that if you do have adult ADHD, it is treatable (much more so than other conditions like depression).
Some people might try to spin it as something cool, but that last "d" stands for disorder. It's a disorder and NOT a "founder thing", regardless of what Paul Graham thinks. ADHD can do enormous damage to your life, relationships, and professional development.
Two schools of thinking I flip flop between to rationalize however I'm currently behaving:
a.) Ideas not meaningfully capitalized on are no more useful than delusions. Force yourself to focus with tools.
b.) Don't worry about it; you should be able to think and imagine freely in and about the environment the world has presented you with. When you have The One Right Idea™, you'll know, and it'll be like it's putting itself together in front of you. Allow yourself kindness, understanding, and leniency; only then will your output be pure. Or something.
Maybe it's good to have some of both of these. Maybe I should plan for them in advance.
Music is big for me - there are some good lists on YouTube.
Taking a few steps forward on something help me get over the initial paralysis. Get people to help you need priorities. I constantly check in with bosses to ensure I’m doing the most important thing.
Interesting about sleep, I definitely feel most productive in the morning after a solid night of sleep.
It has its downsides but a constant comment/compliment I get from friends how much I get done with my limited time. I have to always be doing something that consumes my attention or I’ll go nuts. I can’t watch sports for example because all the constant stops and starts make me lose my attention and go somewhere else.
I have lived my entire life with ADHD: Forget about getting "everything" done, instead periodically reprioritize and keep putting your focus onto these priorities, everything that is actually important enough to get done will and everything else can be done by someone else -- just sit tight. This works for software especially so, just sit and wait for someone more fool hardy with more to lose to do the truly annoying things and then adopt their work if it helps your priorities.
Most responses here are about systems and tools — which help, but they're compensations working around the issue rather than at it.
The underlying problem is network regulation in the brain. Your Default Mode Network (the self-referential mind-wandering system) is supposed to quiet down when you engage in tasks. In ADHD, that toggle is unreliable — the DMN keeps intruding, which is why you get that "barrage of micro ideas" breaking through during focus.
A few things that work at the root:
Meditation — not as a relaxation tool, but as direct neuroplasticity training. Focused attention practice (noticing when your mind wandered, returning to object) is literally thousands of reps training that DMN/task-positive toggle. Long-term meditators show measurably better DMN suppression during tasks.
Sleep — DMN regulation degrades hard with poor sleep. Non-negotiable foundation.
The deeper move is changing your relationship to the thoughts themselves. The DMN will always generate ideas. The shift is recognizing them as arisings rather than commands. They still come — they just lose their grip.
Sleep comes up so much. Really interesting.
What's worked for me:
1) Good, regular sleep. ADHD symptoms are way more controllable when I'm well rested.
2) Stimulants: caffeine and Vyvanse. I also had a prescription for Adderall, but it has some nasty side effects for me so I rarely take it.
3) Accept that it's hard to focus on stuff that doesn't interest me, and plan accordingly. (Including career choices.)
4) Work in person, rather than remotely. I'm too tempted to screw around when I'm not around coworkers.
Out of curiosity, what dosages of caffeine do you take? No matter how much I take it never seems to be enough.
I have no idea if this will be useful to you, because it's so contingent on my caffeine sensitivity, my sleep, whether or not I've taken Vyvanse, what time of day it is, and what mental tasks I need to perform.
But to give a real answer:
On workdays I have about 20-40 fl oz of coffee during the morning. I stop all stimulants at noon so I can sleep.
On non-workdays I have 1-3 normal sized mugs of coffee in the morning, just because I like it.
Why is Vyvanse? UK based.
Vyvanse is like long acting adderall that cannot be crushed and snorted. Must be metabolized in your digestion to become active.
Not to be confused with "Adderall XR", which like Vyvanse is meant for slower and longer release than normal Adderall.
At least for me, Vyvanse is much more tolerable than Adderall XR.
Thank you. Will ask my doctor.
Lisdexamfetamine, it’s very similar to Adderall but more expensive as it comes in capsules instead of tablets, but the upside is it lasts all day instead of a few hours. It recently became generic in the US, but is still around $60-120 a month’s supply (at least at my dosage), vs $25 or so for a month of Adderall.
Thank you.
I have adhd, I write them down. Some of them are great ideas, some are shit.
I got diagnosed at 29. Up until then I was very entrepreneurial and ambitious, constantly working on business ideas. Hell I taught myself software engineering because I had a single idea I hyper focused on lol.
The way I see it, lean into it. ADHD is a double edged sword - you get intrusive thoughts, some of them are bad, but some of them are ideas.
You can’t really change your brain, you can take medication and it might help you focus a bit more.
But I say lean into it. I’ve had several successful ventures from pure ADHD fuelled idea binges.
I don’t really switch off, but I make sure I work in the office every day because being around people helps.
But when I’m alone it’s a barrage of thoughts, some days more intense than others.
There are alot of ADHD founders and programmers
Yep green and this is common “founder ADHD” thing. I just worry about the day today coping.
First of all if you have the money get an official diagnosis. While self diagnosis is often right, ADHD symptoms can have overlap with many other things so it is better to be sure.
Now want a quick fix? If you can, get medication. It doesn't work for all people with ADHD but for those that it does it will give you the most bang for the buck.
Now there is coping strategies. Therapists can help a lot. There is also people offering ADHD coaching. This is great because the coaches tend to have ADHD themselves and understand you. It helped me personally a lot but be warned that everyone can offer coaching so quality may wary.
Last part is lifestyle. Sport. It is not optional. Running is amazing and will help you a lot but if you are not fit enough yet, walk. Walk every day for at least 30min. You need to. Also personally for me reading a physical book for at least 30min a day makes a huge, huge difference. Diet is important but what works varies from ADHD person to person. For me cutting out processed sugar was a good step.
Also no caffeine. This may also vary but completely cutting it helped me personally a lot. Yes, it helps somewhat with executive function but only in the short term and does more harm than good in the long term. Generally any form form of self medication be it alcohol, weed and so on, cut it out. Again get proper medication if you can.
Honestly accepting that you have ADHD or well at least some form of neurodivergency is already the biggest step. It gets so much easier once you learn how to properly manage it.
https://borretti.me/article/notes-on-managing-adhd
Came across this a few months ago on HN here and there’s a fair bit of exposition on things you’ve mentioned. My personal takeaway from it was to try Todoist, which has been a complete game changer in my life. I’ve used other systems before but something about Todoist worked better for my brain (plus the mobile integration is awesome… my second best over the years was org-mode but the mobile story is way too clunky)
It's hard. I take concerta and have been laid off or fired more times than most people I know in long-term employment have had jobs. I take Concerta and drink Coffee, but I mostly just enjoy the coffee. It's really hard to stay on track sometimes, it's really hard to go too long without working on something inherently interesting to me. I'm constantly late and prefer late nights, I tend to always have a bad sleep cycle.
Really basic things that other people seem good at, I struggle. Taxes, finances, anything that requires ambient awareness of systems that have no clear feedback loops. Sometimes penalties for trivial things accumulate and it costs a lot of money. Goals, unless they're something like literally climbing a mountain, don't really motivate me. I don't have any financial or life goals at all, they seem artificial and silly.
Without stimulants, and a thankfully somewhat lenient company/client atm, I'd be screwed.
The positive is that I seem to be much better at making friends than most other people I know, and enjoy a variety of interesting hobbies. I'm also not that fearful or anxious about trying new things.
In terms of who I listen to about the topic, it's certainly not any entrepreneur types, it's mostly friends. Though Trevor Noah has a great podcast on the topic last April
https://pca.st/episode/19d903d2-bb2b-4213-837e-89a1af706ea0
Additionally, I cope by exclusion. I don't obligate myself to many things or events, and refuse to participate in group chats. I keep almost no notifications on, and people know that if they need my attention, they can just call me, otherwise I won't respond until I get around to it. I only buy gifts when I find inspiration to, and try not to spread myself too thin.
I also try to avoid easy things as much as possible. I failed at easy assignments, easy exams in school, why bother going through the rote motions for no other purpose than to be measured on my performance in doing them?
Plans, goals, routine, separation of concerns.
Instead of having a million different tabs open, use a tab session manager, save the stuff you want to read later, and keep open only stuff pertinent to things you are working on.
Prioritize your projects to have actionable goals.
When you procrastinate, try to do so by being productive on smaller projects.
Be aware of your own nature, and try to exert control over it. Recognize that not every idea or desire is useful, and learn to discard the ones that are not and investigate or give more attention to the ones that are.
Organization, take notes and organize them. I often have a scratchpad textfile open, that I then organize into sections (e.g. app ideas, ideas for specific code projects, movie ideas, whatever), break these up further into project or topic files. The ones that grow and get fleshed out are the ones worth pursuing.
Have a healthy sleep and recreation routine to not get burned out.
This is the opposite of what works for me.
Leaning a little into the the distractions, and building processes to quickly search and hop between things had made it better for me.
At the very least opening tabs with Ctrl+T, tab search with Ctrl+Shift+A, quickly closing them with Ctrl+W is my main workflow in Chrome-based browsers.
Once I get my speed up, I find distractions don't occur as often.
Emacs, org-mode, magit, and AI, combined with good sleep, weight lifting, stimulants, have almost completey nullified my ADHD problems.
It's been a hard slog to get here though.
I'd be curious to compare our efficiency and output.
Literally just a text file? This is interesting to me. So many task app choices. But a bit of mark down nd notepad I think is a thing?
I have a few text files open at any one time. One is for a diary I keep, which changes for each month, so for example at the moment I have '2026 01.txt' open. I have a general to-do file and a tech todo file, and then notes.txt. When my notex.txt grows too long, which I define as having to scroll at all, I start to break it up.
When I break it up, I personally use latex files. I know everyone loves markdown, but I'm not a fan of Obsidian (closed source and electron, ugh), so I fell in love with TexStudio.
I have keybindings for simple macros to insert sections and subsections that I can quickly name, and these display in the navigation tree very well. TexStudio also allows multiple tex files open at once with a tabbedinterface, and allows saving sessions, so I can open one file to open all my, say, 'ai app ideas' notes. I've found this to work better for myself than any other available app or solution.
Eventually, I'd like to release a fork which would mainly be trimming stuff out rather than really adding anything in, but it's far from a priority for me at the moment.
I have so many text files (technically wikis and GDocs text docs, but I'm not doing more than lines of text). I was talking to a coworker today about our graveyard of pen and paper notebooks, todo apps, reminder thingies, post-its..
I need two things: ubiquity, so that I can add ideas, todos, etc. wherever I am; and exaggerated simplicity so that I don't end up turning the note solution into its own project that's abandoned or exchanged in a year.
I'm also curious what others' takes are too. Lately I have found myself completely unable to remember things without writing them down or completely losing focus on a task and instead going off on "side quests." A close friend familiar with ADHD hinted that I probably have "late developing ADHD" and advised that I get evaluated/diagnosed.
The thought of that kind of scares me---I'm in my late 20s and tend to think I have functioned my whole life without needing any kind of coping strategy or technique to keep myself on top of my work, but now I am facing the possibility that I might just have to start doing things differently, and I'm not sure where to start.
Aside from actually getting diagnosed, are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?
There are some really good suggestions in this thread: sleep, exercise, medication. Therapy also helps some.
Externalizing my brain helped massively before I was diagnosed. Pages and pages of notes -- both to write an idea down to move away from it and as a way to make sure I do a task. It's way easier for me to accomplish something if I can obsessively plan it out in advance, and it's way easier to stop rolling an idea around in my head if I jot it down (potentially to be never entertained again.)
It's a later step after diagnosis, but my doctor told me I'd be surprised at how effective medication can be. They were 100% right. It's not a cure all and it's not without potential side effects, but it makes me sad that it took me so long to approach my primary doctor about the issues.
But as a side note, the medical info I've read makes a pretty firm statement that there is no late developing ADHD. One if the diagnostic criteria is that the symptoms occurred during childhood. Coping and your environment may affect the disorder's effect on your life, but it's with you for your life. _However_, adult diagnosis is very real. Your environment changes so much as you age, and it may or may not make ADHD worse. I'd talk to your primary doctor with an open mind, both for what may be going on and for how to deal with it.
There are endless systems, tools, and strategies.
Carefully consider your environment. I perform best with very little going on around me. In my physical environment and on my PC. Austere. Minimize things that catch your brain and eye. One or two apps at a time, close everything else. Pick your one more important thing every day and work on that. It needs to be a contract. Usually you have one or two important things to be doing and you can ignore everything else without too much consequence.
To remember things you need an ironclad todo system that lets you very quickly capture anything you need to remember. You need to be able to record, triage, filter, prioritize, and execute on anything you need to remember. If any one of those stages is leaky you won't trust it and it won't last. My entire life is structured around managing it. I have to have very strong discipline. House must be spotless. Desk must be spotless. Try to work in the same place at the same time every day. Environmental and contextual stability is huge. Your brain must associate a particular desk, chair, place with doing the most important things. If you allow yourself to goof off or do other things in that place you are losing the fight.
Working out fixes a lot for me too. I workout or my mood and motivation falls apart. Move or die. Again, consistency is key. Everything I do around environment is to reduce the need to use executive function. It is finite and fickle for people with ADHD. The more you have to think and convince yourself to do things the less likely you are to do them. You need consistent cues. "Sit down here, start timer, means work on main thing and nothing else." If you can have discipline at all of these external things, the work can just happen and there is a kind of freedom in that.
Program outlets. Give yourself set, specific time to explore the sidetracking. Don't tell your brain no. Tell it "later". It helps if you know there is time for the extra thoughts. That there is a relief valve.
Also, drugs. I use prescribed stimulants. There are some unpleasant negative things, but I can function with them and life is better with them. But it isn't some magical cure. You still have to be organized and willing to work on your tasks or you will just be really focused on things you don't really need to be doing.
I could write so much more, but that is some top of mind stuff that I think sits at the top of my hierarchy of being productive. Oh and you may need to have some conversations with future you. How is future you, a week, month, year from now going to feel if you burned a lot of time on side quests?
What is “late developing adhd” bar the obvious?
Whether a personal attribute is a strength or a weakness seems to depend heavily on context.
The key for any us may be to just find people we can work with who have different attributes, resulting in balanced partnership.
I have at least some anecdotal evidence to support pairings of compatible and complementary ADHD and HFAS minds.
Character is probably the most important single element, however.
You’re not alone a lot of founders and builders experience this ADHD-like pattern: intense curiosity, deep focus, then idea overload. Your brain is optimized for exploration, not maintenance, which is why vision comes easy and follow-through feels hard. What helps is having one place to dump ideas, time-boxing deep work, offloading admin, and keeping tools minimal. Switching off is still tough, but physical activity, hard stop routines, and accepting rest as part of productivity make a real difference.
Yeh rest is a good one. Something craved but hard to attain (sitting here on HN at midnight UK)
(I am not a doctor.)
> I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure.
I take your hedging to mean you are probably self diagnosing. It's worth talking to a doctor and getting the ball rolling on a formal diagnosis. ADHD is not the only diagnosis with those symptoms. For instance bipolar and autism spectrum disorder. Again, not a doctor, take that with a grain of salt.
There are probably new tactics you can adopt in this thread, and they may help and are worth trying. Advice which is actionable today is valuable. But if this is severe enough to disrupt your life, the best strategy is a combination of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes (eg exercise).
Easier said than done, I know. I have my own issues I'm struggling with and I get it. I'm in the midst of trying that same three pronged approach.
Please also understand that these diagnosis do not all have the same consequences for not treating them. If you don't want to pursue formal diagnosis and treatment, that is your right, but I would urge you to investigate whether or not you are bipolar in any case. If you have your first manic episode, and you don't understand that is what is happening, it could be dangerous. What you're describing sounds more like ADHD to me personally but is not inconsistent with hypomania either. Again, not a doctor, grain of salt.
Note that if you ever want to be a pilot, THINK VERY HARD BEFORE GETTING DIAGNOSED OR MEDICATED. This doesn't apply to most people, but it is the major gotcha on an otherwise straightforward decision.
/r/flying is full of people who wish they didn't have this in their medical record. The FAA is totally backwards about medical stuff and has a very dim view towards ADHD & associated meds.
This came up on HN recently. I don’t have the link.
I'm disappointed to acknowledge you have a point. Shame on the FAA for pushing people into the closet with this.
If one did want to become a pilot, I do think it would be critical to determine whether or not they were prone to manic episodes. That really could be very dangerous to a pilot and their crew, passengers, etc.
Also, from my 15 minutes of preliminary research, I don't think that applies to pilots of ultralights. So if your dream is simply to fly, it's still achievable.
1/ Chose a career as a Data Scientist, which benefits from intense focus. 2/ All the thoughts and tasks that i get in my head, if tasks are small, i try to do some of them immediately. Otherwise, i write it down, and keep a sticky which i close at the end of the day. 3/ Am 40, I have a partner, who has slowly realized that i am different, and since the past few years she coaches me to do tasks i dont like (submit expense reports). I happily give her pocket shopping money in exchange. 4/ I take notes at every meeting, Notion is my tool. 5/ Switching off, what's that? I realize my teams think that i am a maniac, and my wife thinks am too obsessed. I help my team do things, and tell them i can come across as too hot, and they need to let me to know to backoff. I like to watch movies, and do take a break from time to time.
What quietened the “thousands of competing thoughts” that used to go through my brain constantly was an ADHD diagnosis and then medication (methylphenidate / Concerta XL in my case, I tried lisdexamfetamine / Elvanse first but it did nothing for my ADHD symptoms. Everyone responds differently to the various medications, you may have to try several until you find one that works for you).
The diagnosis/medication route isn’t for everyone but, in my case, it is a thousand times better than trying any systems/strategies unmedicated.
Medication alone isn’t a magical cure but it gets me to the point where various systems/strategies do start to work.
Also whilst medicated I don’t get as distracted anywhere near as easily. If I do think of something else I can write it down and go back to what I was working on.
Whilst medicated I don’t try and keep track of 4 different conversations going on around me whilst not giving enough attention to the actual person I’m supposed to be listening to and talking to.
Whilst medicated I don’t just endlessly write, rewrite or reorder TODO lists, I can actually start (and finish!) items on that list. This means I’m not just motivated by stress/deadlines, I can get things done way ahead of the last minute.
An ADHD diagnosis and medication has been utterly transformational in my life.
I tried a whole host of stuff in the years before I finally went for an official diagnosis. In hindsight I wish I’d spoken to my doctor years earlier but, guess what, people with ADHD procrastinate.
Lastly, I now no longer have to expend huge amounts of energy masking my ADHD symptoms. Prior to diagnosis I didn’t realise just how much of a toll this was taking on me and I just attributed it to 25 years of working in the IT industry and possible burnout.
I’m not diagnosed but have a high correlation condition (APD) which explains my inattentive ADHD ways that only my closest people basically knew were there the whole time.
After reading a book about APD, I felt like I was reading reports written about my life. I told my late wife’s best friend and she was like “she knew the whole time, you drove her crazy sometimes”. I was blissfully ignorant.
I drink a lot of coffee as a baseline and have since high school. I’m afraid of stimulant drugs and won’t pursue them.
The one thing that I love that truly changed my life for the better is running. I started at 45 after a series of really awful events. I’ve never felt such a clarity of mind and feeling.
I wish I had known about it in my teens. I went through alot of shitty times without understanding why. Life moved on, but I wasted alot of opportunity and missed some things that I regret a bit.
Run (or bike or whatever gets you) and get to know yourself. Know what you want, and when you embark on a side quest, stop and see if you are going where you want to be.
> I have ADHD. I think. Pretty sure.
You might be right, but until you get a professional diagnosis you can't really be sure. Hacker-news will disagree but it is impossible to be objective about your own mental health. The good news is that if you do have adult ADHD, it is treatable (much more so than other conditions like depression).
Some people might try to spin it as something cool, but that last "d" stands for disorder. It's a disorder and NOT a "founder thing", regardless of what Paul Graham thinks. ADHD can do enormous damage to your life, relationships, and professional development.
Two schools of thinking I flip flop between to rationalize however I'm currently behaving:
a.) Ideas not meaningfully capitalized on are no more useful than delusions. Force yourself to focus with tools.
b.) Don't worry about it; you should be able to think and imagine freely in and about the environment the world has presented you with. When you have The One Right Idea™, you'll know, and it'll be like it's putting itself together in front of you. Allow yourself kindness, understanding, and leniency; only then will your output be pure. Or something.
Maybe it's good to have some of both of these. Maybe I should plan for them in advance.
Hmm b) is hard. When is the right idea ignored for next shiny brain thought?
> I have ADHD. I think.
then think about talking to a medical professional, and a therapist, and coming up with your own coping strategies.
> How do you manage the constant stream of thoughts and ideas?
take notes of ideas and come back to them later when you have time.
My ideal is document everything. Every idea. All thoughts. Links. Ides I have. Then thoughtfully come back to them.
My idea is document everything. Every idea. All thoughts. Links. Ides I have. Then thoughtfully come back to them.
Music is big for me - there are some good lists on YouTube.
Taking a few steps forward on something help me get over the initial paralysis. Get people to help you need priorities. I constantly check in with bosses to ensure I’m doing the most important thing.
Interesting about sleep, I definitely feel most productive in the morning after a solid night of sleep.
It has its downsides but a constant comment/compliment I get from friends how much I get done with my limited time. I have to always be doing something that consumes my attention or I’ll go nuts. I can’t watch sports for example because all the constant stops and starts make me lose my attention and go somewhere else.
I have lived my entire life with ADHD: Forget about getting "everything" done, instead periodically reprioritize and keep putting your focus onto these priorities, everything that is actually important enough to get done will and everything else can be done by someone else -- just sit tight. This works for software especially so, just sit and wait for someone more fool hardy with more to lose to do the truly annoying things and then adopt their work if it helps your priorities.
Sleep. Coffee. Focus music. Non-stimulant medication.