Treesheets resemble mind maps, which I use to organize thoughts, but not for lists.

My brain just imploded neuron by neuron as if each was a star collapsing into a black hole, leaving a desolate recursive hellscape.

Thanks

Others have covered this well. From my experience (35 years), most “developers” write stream of thought code. It reflects how their brains process, without regard to others. When I have agency, I can steadily refactor the code to reduce indirection, nested if.then, etc. When I don’t, I’m in danger of being too slow in completing the work. Just lost my job for that reason while working with a 1000 line service entry method with a cyclomatic complexity of 310 and 34 class parameters. Coupled with being the acceptance tester as well, it makes it near impossible to succeed.

For extremely complicated code I used to create simple diagram sketches that illustrated the dependencies. It acted as a series of bookmarks to help keep my place. I think I have a smaller “working space” in my mind than non ADHD programmers. I think they can keep all that complexity in their mind at once while I cannot.

In a way, I turn that into an asset by writing code that I can reason about, which by definition requires it to be SOLID, and with minimal responsibility per function.

Lately, I’ve been using AI to generate sequence and class diagrams of the code to act as a high-level view of what’s going on. Major time saver.

Damn, you sound like me at my company… except I just got fired because I can’t fix code fast enough, and they reject any effort to improve it. 35 years of experience here. In some environments, pointing out problems leads to unemployment.

It’s going national next year if the Republicans gain more control.

Dude, we are not in the 1950s. Just last week I watched a 70yo woman pay for her groceries using her phone via NFC for example. Some of us didn’t learn how to manage money from our parents. I was lucky - I did. Some of us don’t have access to all the tech. We are behind on connectivity in rural areas, but consider how large the U.S.A. is compared to most nations combined with the over-developed profit motive here.

I’m growing weary of the global pastime of denegrating America and Americans based on stereotypes. It’s as bad as some of us denegrating places like France for similar reasons. If you think you’re better than us, guess what - you’re proving you are not. We’re all fundamentally the same, with different histories.

I log on to my accounts regularly to look at balance and history. I put all passwords into KeePassDX/XC so I can get to my pin if I forget it.

My whole life up to about 8 years ago, I used a checkbook and I was always able to keep it balanced by regularly comparing what I had on my register to what came back in the monthly statement. I was able to track down where I was wrong and put a little check mark next to the verified balance.

I finally gave up this routine because I almost never write checks anymore (like once a year or so), and I’m convinced (after a few decades) that the bank gets it right. I review my spending regularly to keep my expenses as low as possible and avoid getting too profligate.

Paying for everything with cash makes it harder to manage your spending since you have to track it manually. That said, I don’t use my debit card for purchases because I am paranoid about privacy on the one hand, and I don’t want to be tracking my balances quite that closely. Instead, I withdraw some cash with the expectation that it will last about 2 weeks, use that for day-to-day stuff, and use my rewards credit card for most significant purchases.

I keep track of my card balance loosely to ensure I don’t over-spend and pay that in full each month. Unfortunately, it’s easy to track my purchasing history on the card if someone somehow gets access, but at least I get cash back to apply when needed.

By alloting myself a certain amount of cash, I don’t worry about tracking every cash purchase. I track at a higher level whether I should spend or not, and curtail whim spending based on cash on hand and how long since my last ATM visit. I review my credit card balance for similar reasons - how much can I legitimately pay at the end of the pay period? Keep the balance below that at all costs.

I had that problem, but I never thought it was ADHD. It turned out to be sleep apnea, and I had it for a while undiagnosed. I was 32 when I found out and not overweight.

I get the effect you describe when I am doing highly social things like parties, festivals, or public entertainment events. I attribute this to introversion rather than ADHD.

Is there no bookmark/favorite button on your app?

I have. Years after my adult diagnosis, I finally caved in and got medication. You are definitely playing life on hard mode.

The path to the easier mode won’t be fast unless you are lucky. I first took Vivance because that was all my plan would cover, and I got the “sudden rages” side effect, which affected work.

Adderall works better for me, but I’m trying some other stuff too as I think it is not solving the problem as much as I initially thought. It gets me to the point where I can focus and be motivated to act until early afternoon, and I’m not sure the focus/attention part is as good as I need. For the moment, I have a supplemental low dose at 1pm.

What I still lack is good executive function: decicive decisions, with subsequent actions. It’s better, but I don’t see it as anywhere near “the norm” yet.

I learned young that I have to use timers for all cooking tasks. I have zero ability to identify how much time passes. I’ve always been jealous of people who just throw food in the oven or on the stove, do a bunch of stuff, and instinctively retrieve all the food, properly cooked.

I don’t know which is worse:

1. Finally doing it, and it took very little time and effort, leaving me angry at myself for putting it off so long, or
2. Doing it, taking all day, all night, finally leaving it unfinished at 3 am, berating myself for wasting so damn much time on this piece of sh*t I knew would be a nightmare!

I am experiencing the same kind of problems right now. I’m convinced that a large part of it is depression. I got an ADHD diagnosis couple of decades ago as an adult. I’m very successful at what I do and make decent money. He felt that I had done a great job of coming up with compensations for my problem.

However lately those compensations aren’t working. I look at my list of things to do, and I just can’t do them. I’m in the state where the key things I need to do cause me such emotional pain that I avoid them. This to me is depression.

It appears depression magnifies the problems caused by ADHD. One has an additional layer of “what’s the point of all this? It won’t change anything”, going through one’s head. It saps the will, which is needed to overcome the initial motivation barrier.

Now, instead of having to smash through one stone wall, one has to smash through two…

Thank you for sharing that video. I watched it, and I am definitely ADHD. Although there are times when some of the autism characteristics do resonate.

For example, there’s one time when I had a a teacher explaining matrixes and I raised my hand and asked him why we are learning this (which caused considerable snickering on class, and obvious embarrassment for the teacher).

I generally do need to understand why we’re learning something in order to have enough interest to focus on it.

However I don’t think that’s autism, as I feel that it is difficult for anybody to learn something if they don’t even understand how it is to be used.