I've come across "action sequences" in psychology writing, which seems to be the active form of procedural memory. Over time well rehearsed actions can move from conscious parts of the brain to parts focused on motor actions like the basal ganglia ( and its friends ).
Probably easier to focus if distraction has moved to the old lizard brain.
I can't find an obviously good source to share, but there's plenty of research to check out.
It's certainly true that simply explaining it in terms of "neurotransmitter levels" is an oversimplification. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder which is predominantly genetic in origin. In other words, ADHD is not just a matter of the brain's state at the time of diagnosis, but the development of the brain from the very beginning. Brain structure is heavily involved here. It's been shown that prefrontal cortex is significantly smaller in ADHD, along with certain other brain regions, like the hippocampus.
But the implication of neurotransmitters in causing ADHD is not merely hypothetical. ADHD is polygenic, i.e involving many sifferent genes. But in genetic studies, many of the genes found to he most correlated with ADHD were directly involved in monoamine neurotransmission, and many of those relate to dopamine. These include the genes for the D4 and D5 receptors, the dopamine transporter(DAT), which is responsible for dopamine reuptake(and also one of the targets for ritalin), TAAR1, which regulates synaptic monoamine release(this is targeted by amphetamine), and various enzymes involved in monoamine metabolism or synthesis(MAO-A, COMT, DBH).
There's also some involvement of serotonin and noradrenaline related genes like SERT, the serotonin 1b receptor(which, big surprise, is involved in mediating dopamine in PFC), the adrenergic alpha 2a receptor(which is targeted by the adhd meds clonidine and guanfacine), and some more enzymes.
So the genetic evidence for the involvement of dopamine is quite strong. There's also some evidence from brain imaging studies, showing that long-term treatment with central stimulants(which primarily act on dopamine and noradrenaline) leads to reduced abnormalities in brain structure. In addition there's mountains of evidence for the effectiveness of stimulants in managing the symptoms of ADHD.
In conclusion, the role of dopamine ADHD is backed up by a lot of empirical data. Doesn't make it the only factor involved, but it's certainly an important one, and not merely hypothetical.
I have experienced most of what you have written about and have taken many similar steps :) The major difference being I would describe myself still at the level of a juniorish engineer.
My only addition and I'm very curious as to your opinion: I think mental health / physical health is more impactful in software engineering than most other professions. At least for me, if I'm sick it directly impacts my working memory and ability to focus. I always tell my friends I could do yard work just fine, yeah I'd feel like crap still but I could do it. If I'm trying to code something difficult often times I can end up making zero progress or arguably negative progress if I'm sick long enough as I lose context of code changing around me.
The same holds true if I'm stressed or anxious or whatever.
This can probably become a cycle with the things you mentioned that makes it easy to trend downward.
I used to think this same thing but I went down a rabbit hole a few months ago listening to people very critical of string theory like angela collier, sabbine, eric weinstein, peter woit and some others on youtube. Yeah they all have their own quirks but after listening to their take on the history of string theory the common things are it hasn't produced anything but the major proponents of it always talk like it has and in some cases outright lie about things that it has contributed.
I really like listening to brian greene and sean carroll but now when I listen to them, particularly in recent videos, it feels like there is much less substance to what they're actually saying string theory has done.
But who knows! Maybe I'll learn something new and completely flip my world view again, I'm not a physicist by any stretch so have to rely on listening to experts :)
I'm sure I'm biased but the old school pm culture at Microsoft is still alive and well. The new hires are forced to play the old stupid games of doing anything to get the metrics to show what they want in the short term and the cycle continues. Windows and Office both have this problem and I think will continue to until they get someone up top who's sole purpose is to root out this culture from middle management through low level execs.
I would love to hear other folks opinions as I'm sure I see only a tiny sliver of what's going on :)
I'd love to hear from someone knowledgeable in the area but my gut instinct was the majority of people / organizations signing on to that 'pause' just wanted to catch up.
probably a hot take but microsoft's product and pm culture is garbage leftover from the microsoft's anti customer era and is most entrenched in windows and other old orgs
I'm assuming Azure has less of the culture but I haven't personally experienced it. Mostly my thought is the old culture is much stronger in the older orgs. They seem to be trying to change it but the change is really just superficial with the same people using new words but doing the same things.
Not in large orgs. They missed the Internet, but they did one smart thing: they put Novell out of business by offering a free alternative. Everybody got hooked up and now it's too late. Practically all large organizations that have desktop users are using AD.
Multiple sources can hardly be considered an effective bar to decide if something as a whole is good or bad for you. The author completely misses major pieces of literature around these and citing something that is critical for you body as 'probably good for you' while not covering a single instance of health problems from deficiencies makes it hard to take this seriously.
There are a lot of things that supplements are claimed to help but clearly don't. That being said there are things that have promising scientific research about benefits and this article lacks any information on EPA omega 3s separate from the others which ultimately makes me disregard any conclusion of omega 3s as a whole.
Look into the potential effects of EPA omega 3s specifically on depression and the potential benefits compared to or combined with anti-depressants. Andrew Huberman had it in his episode on anxiety and depression I think.
The impact of omega 3s on adhd is also an interesting area of research.
Using a click bait "brain-boosting" description completely misses the point of many studies that show that certain diets low in different omega 3s cause different problems for people.
Multitasking two coding problems at once completely doesn't work for me but what you described works and I do that all the time.
There seems to be a language disconnect for the type of multitasking that works vs. doesn't work.
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