Reading the OP and this comment I can't help but think "hmm, sounds like me when I'm unmedicated."
I'm a very ambitious and motivated person. I love stupid hard, nitty gritty problems. I've been writing code since I was 8. I landed my first coding job when I was 16 (working for the USAF Research Laboratory, no less). I'm now 29.
Growing up I was always driven by my interests. If I wasn't interested, I wasn't going to do it. If I was interested there was no stopping me from doing it. I was smart enough that I coasted through high school, but when I hit college I very nearly flunked out.
The problem was that my interests ran hot and cold. One day/minute/hour I'd be deeply interested in some subject, and the next I couldn't care less. This would happen with topics which I knew were captivating to me in a general sense. Sometimes I'd get so interested in some project I'd skip other classes for a week or more because I couldn't stop thinking about it.
However most of the time I'd find that without exercising hurculean amounts of discipline there was no way I was going to be able to stay on track well enough to study and finish homework/projects.
I'd sit down for a lecture with all kinds of ambition to focus and absorb the material. 20 minutes in my brain was somewhere else and the margins of my notebook were filled with mindless doodles.
When my grades dropped low enough my school's intervention programs kicked in. It was suggested that I go get checked out for learning disabilities. Since I felt somewhat compelled to show I was making an effort, I did.
I figured I didnt have any kind of disorder - especially ADHD. I wasn't hyper, and when I was "in the zone" it was nearly impossible for me to shake my focus.
It turns out that having ADHD doesn't necessarily mean that you are never focused. It just means you have a very difficult time choosing to be focused. In fact, hyperfocusing (marked by losing track of time, forgetting to eat, etc) is a common symptom.
Occasionally I go mine my old college notes for some obscure detail. With a single glance you can easily tell if a page was written pre-medication or if it was written post-medication.
If you think this story echos your own experiences and struggles, do yourself a favor and go have a chat with a psychiatrist or neurologist. It may just change your life in a huge, incredible way.
Finally, do try to stop comparing yourself to others in such a destructive way. Success stories are a bit like airbrushed models in lingerie ads. They don't give you the whole story. They're there to capture your eyeballs with hopes that they can be monetized, marketed to, or both.
Try to focus on incremental goals, instead. Scope these goals with a focus on finishing rather than perfection, and don't beat yourself up for not being superhuman. Specifically, try your best to fight the thought that success is predicated upon the kind of hard work that produces exhaustion. Success comes from routinely focusing on well-scoped, iterative goals.
So, you think inability to focus is the cause of your interests running "hot and cold"?
On medication (assuming some kind of CNS stimulant?) do you find that you're less prone to get excited about new things, and spend more time on things you're already invested in?
For me, it's really easy to get excited about new things. I throw a lot of stuff at the wall. Some of it sticks, most of it doesn't. But the more things that manage to find their way into my interests, the less time I have to focus on any single one of them.
I've been able to work around this to a certain extent with some pretty strict scheduling, but no matter what I'm working on, there's always a piece of me that REALLY wants to be focusing on something else.
> So, you think inability to focus is the cause of your interests running "hot and cold"?
Absolutely, but this may be unique to me. I find complex things interesting. If I can't maintain focus long enough to get a certain level of complexity all loaded into the forefront of my consciousness, I find that I don't become interested when I otherwise would.
> do you find that you're less prone to get excited about new things, and spend more time on things you're already invested in?
No, and yes, respectively.
I am still subject to distraction while medicated, especially from new and interesting things. I'd guess that new things are as likely to pique my interest whether or not I'm medicated.
The difference is that medication makes it easier for me to decide on a scope for my current activities and makes it so that a conscious decision is required in order to react to a stimulus or tangent which would take me out of that intended scope. Without medication I don't usually have direct control over this choice, and I'm very infrequently conscious of it.
> there's always a piece of me that REALLY wants to be focusing on something else
I experience this whether or not I'm medicated, but medication makes that voice in my head shut up once I get moving on an unrelated task.
This sounds very much like me. I beat it by finding a routine that works for me, a routine that helped me become more disciplined... and it took a while to beat, so don't expect immediate results. Also, while this worked for me, it may not work for you, everyone [despite those telling you that you're not a unique snowflake] is different and different things work for each of us so take what is helpful from my routine and ignore the rest, YMMV.
First step: Finding your zone. This is a matter of conditioning and conditioning doesn't come easily. Find something that puts you in a zone of focus. It doesn't matter what the focus is on, it doesn't matter what that zone is - the key is finding focus and maintaining it for longer and longer periods until you can easily maintain focus for a number of hours at a time [I'm told there are drugs that do this very effectively, but I personally try to avoid drugs wherever possible]. Whatever it is should be something that doesn't allow you to lose your focus or give up, even when the going gets tough and every instinct in you is telling you to throw in the towel.
For me it was cycling - totally unrelated to programming. It was better for me than being in a gym because if I decide to stop pedaling, I stop going anywhere. In a gym, this means just getting off the bike and I'm no further behind. If you're 10 miles from home and stop pedaling, you're 10 miles from home and the only way back home is to get back on your bike and start pedaling again. Sitting on the side of the road procrastinating isn't going to help, nor is it going to be in any way enticing to sit there. After 40 miles, you could be exhausted and realizing you still have a 5 mile climb ahead of you before you can put your bike down; there's no way around it, you just have to get on and do it.
I've set up a playlist on my phone of music that runs around 130-140 bpm [that's approximately the speed of club music that makes you wanna dance] and will run without looping for the duration of my ride. I listen to the same playlist every ride. You might get sick of it, but you listen anyway. After a few weeks of agony and wanting to throw in the towel but doing it anyway you start to find peace in the pain and it becomes a meditation, you don't even hear the music consciously any more but the beat drives you forward, you find the zone and it's just you, the pain and the road and before you know it the circuit is over. For me this process took a number of weeks, but now, if I put that playlist on, even if I'm not on my bike, my brain snaps into that zone. It's been conditioned to focus when that playlist comes on, just like Pavlov's dog salivating when the bell rings. [This requires ongoing maintenance]
Step 2: Remove necessary distractions. When I say necessary, I mean unavoidable things that will need doing and will break your focus when they are required to be done because you didn't take the preemptive strike of killing them off first. Things like important phone calls to your accountant or the bank. If you can't focus while you have a messy desk, clean your desk, get your coffee, eat your breakfast, do all of these unavoidable things first.
Step 3: Understand the problem intimately, ensure that you can recite it inside outside, upside down and backwards. You don't want to have to keep going back to ensure you understand the problem, this will break your focus. If you need to pester someone to help you understand the problem, pester them until you have fully digested every nuance of what it is you're trying to achieve.
Step 4: Understand the solution to that problem intimately. Ensure that you understand every single step that will take you from where are right now to where you need to be. Any pieces you don't understand, go back and reread step 4. If you keep having to come back and figure stuff out, this will break your focus. Again, pester whoever you need to in order to completely understand the path to the solution.
Steps 3 and 4 are my biggest triggers for procrastination. If I don't understand the problem or the solution to that problem well enough, I can't maintain focus. It might take me days to get down to it if I let myself skip either of these steps - so I don't.
Step 5: Everything else can wait: No Facebook, no Hacker News, no Blinkfeed, no Quora, no email, no phone calls, no text messages, no whatever else it is you like to waste time with. Put them all aside and have the discipline to stay away from them until you're finished this step. Now, do whatever it was from Step 1 that puts you into your focused zone. Get on with completing the steps you've laid out in Step 4.
Step 6: You're done, go reward yourself with all those other distractions that you put aside to complete Step 5. Congratulations.
Wow, this is eerily close to describing me. Even the bit about your first coding job being at a young age at a research laboratory (though mine was a university).
> When my grades dropped low enough my school's intervention programs kicked in. It was suggested that I go get checked out for learning disabilities. Since I felt somewhat compelled to show I was making an effort, I did.
This is where the stories diverge though. My college's intervention program was basically them calling me lazy and forcing me to sign a paper agreeing that I would improve. I knew I couldn't accomplish that, so I didn't re-enroll the next semester.
I had always accepted that I was very lazy and learned to work around/with it. But over the past few years I feel like it has been getting much worse. My passions are starting to feel like chores. I used to practice the guitar for several hours each day, but now it's closer to an hour each month. Even sitting down to watch a whole movie on Netflix can be tough. I'm not sure if I've watched even a single movie in it's entirety at all this year.
But of course, I won't even notice myself spending 4 hours aimlessly browsing the web without leaving my chair until I realize that I've wasted my night...
It's gotten so bad that I have considered it might not just be laziness and comments like yours are really encouraging. But I don't know where I'd begin. And, frankly, the idea of seeing a specialist for help or medication really scares me.
Do I just google for psychiatrists near me and give one a call? Would I need to find one that specializes in ADHD? Are there any websites that can help direct me?
I really appreciate you taking the time to write this comment by the way.
> the idea of seeing a specialist for help or medication really scares me.
Don't let it. You're seeking help voluntarily. Assuming something is actually wrong with your brain, it's worth it to address it head-on. Worst case, you wind up with a bad doctor and you have to go find a new one. Best case, you gain some tools to help you gain a much higher degree of control over your life.
> Do I just google for psychiatrists near me and give one a call? Would I need to find one that specializes in ADHD? Are there any websites that can help direct me?
What country are you in? If you're in the states, I'd start with your insurance company. Most insurance companies have directories of in-network specialists. If your insurance is shit and doesn't cover specialist visits, then yeah - I'd just Google around. Absent recommendations, look for somebody board-certified [1]. I happened to luck into a doctor who had both psychiatric and neurological specialities.
In New Zealand you must start off by asking your GP for a referral to a psychiatrist (you may need to do this in the USA if your insurance requires a referral). Explain your concerns with concentration, and that you'd like to be screened for ADHD and other related conditions. At this point if they're well-informed they'll likely ask you a few questions about it and offer some advice, but since you're asking to see a specialist they should be willing to make a referral. If they're not well-informed, they'll either skip the questions & counsel or tell you to piss off. If you get the referral, you'll go see a psychiatrist. I have no idea what the diagnosis process is like here, however - I was diagnosed in the states. However, when you are diagnosed your psych will receive a special authority number. Eventually this number will be transferred over to your GP once your treatment regimen is stabilized.
Aside: In the states it's not likely that your GP will tell you to piss off when asking for a psych/neuro referral. Also in the states GPs may offer to treat you directly w/o a specialist. This is illegal in New Zealand, as general physicians aren't typically qualified in this area. Really - go see a specialist.
The diagnosis process is nothing to be worried about, though it could take a bit of time. The process can take a few hours, or a few 1-2 hour sessions. If I recall correctly, they did an ADHD questionnaire, the MMPI [2], an IQ test, an "IQ achievement test," a few very brief visual/spatial tests which supposedly look for neurological symptoms schizophrenia, and a session or two of discussion with a psychologist about what my goals for improvement were, where I felt I was failing, etc. I think my range of testing was a bit more in depth than usual, as they were looking for a bunch of different learning disorders. After all this they discussed the results of each of the tests with me, explained my diagnosis, and set me up with the psychiatrist to begin a treatment regimen.
This sounds A LOT like myself. I've never really considered going to a psychiatrist or neurologist, I thought my experience was somewhat normal. Do you mind elaborating some about what sort of medication/condition are you talking about?
I've been editing to fill in some more details. I'd rather not discuss my experiences with medications specifically here, but feel free to shoot me an e-mail (see profile) and I'll be happy to answer any questions I can.
If you want a possibly contrasting experience, feel free to email me (see profile), I was diagnosed with ADHD-C within the past year after many years of "this is just how I work, there's nothing that can be done".
I'm a very ambitious and motivated person. I love stupid hard, nitty gritty problems. I've been writing code since I was 8. I landed my first coding job when I was 16 (working for the USAF Research Laboratory, no less). I'm now 29.
Growing up I was always driven by my interests. If I wasn't interested, I wasn't going to do it. If I was interested there was no stopping me from doing it. I was smart enough that I coasted through high school, but when I hit college I very nearly flunked out.
The problem was that my interests ran hot and cold. One day/minute/hour I'd be deeply interested in some subject, and the next I couldn't care less. This would happen with topics which I knew were captivating to me in a general sense. Sometimes I'd get so interested in some project I'd skip other classes for a week or more because I couldn't stop thinking about it.
However most of the time I'd find that without exercising hurculean amounts of discipline there was no way I was going to be able to stay on track well enough to study and finish homework/projects.
I'd sit down for a lecture with all kinds of ambition to focus and absorb the material. 20 minutes in my brain was somewhere else and the margins of my notebook were filled with mindless doodles.
When my grades dropped low enough my school's intervention programs kicked in. It was suggested that I go get checked out for learning disabilities. Since I felt somewhat compelled to show I was making an effort, I did.
I figured I didnt have any kind of disorder - especially ADHD. I wasn't hyper, and when I was "in the zone" it was nearly impossible for me to shake my focus.
It turns out that having ADHD doesn't necessarily mean that you are never focused. It just means you have a very difficult time choosing to be focused. In fact, hyperfocusing (marked by losing track of time, forgetting to eat, etc) is a common symptom.
Occasionally I go mine my old college notes for some obscure detail. With a single glance you can easily tell if a page was written pre-medication or if it was written post-medication.
If you think this story echos your own experiences and struggles, do yourself a favor and go have a chat with a psychiatrist or neurologist. It may just change your life in a huge, incredible way.
Finally, do try to stop comparing yourself to others in such a destructive way. Success stories are a bit like airbrushed models in lingerie ads. They don't give you the whole story. They're there to capture your eyeballs with hopes that they can be monetized, marketed to, or both.
Try to focus on incremental goals, instead. Scope these goals with a focus on finishing rather than perfection, and don't beat yourself up for not being superhuman. Specifically, try your best to fight the thought that success is predicated upon the kind of hard work that produces exhaustion. Success comes from routinely focusing on well-scoped, iterative goals.