Not officially diagnosed with ADD (on a waitlist though) but autistic, and I second that. I constantly feel like I’m too lazy and yet I got my current job through an internship. It was supposed to last three months and I got an of#er three weeks in, because they were so impressed with my willingness to perform.
I was very bewildered. I still have to remind myself of that when I feel like I’m not getting shit done because my mind refuses to cooperate. What I can convince myself of by now is that those moments are the productivity normal for most people and that even when I’m like that my productivity is high enough - especially because that is usually the moment when I look into things that are not the absolute core of my job.
I’m a test automation engineer, but people explicitly want me to not just automate, but also care for quality topics as a whole, so reading relevant blogs and security news and feeding that back into the team is part of my job.
Still often feel guilty about that, but my boss repeatedly told me I’m absolutely overachieving and fulfilling the job more than he hoped for.
For me, there’s two takeaways:
- you probably have higher standards for yourself that most people, and the moments where your brain cooperates you’re like a racecar compared to a truck, and
- find a niche that interests you is of utmost importance. I was once at an info event for SAP and they said that autistic people are intrinsically motivated and it’s almost impossible to get us motivated with things like more money. It’s definitely true for me, and for my few ADHD friends, though I’m not sure if that is in general true. Accepting this has allowed me to make peace with myself and to take a much healthier approach to jobs than before - “I can work any job, I don’t need my dream job” when I was desperate for a job was the most toxic thing I could do to myself.
Serious question: how do you manage not to lose the organizers, and how do you remember to add stuff to it?
It always works a few days for me then I forget to bring it or add stuff and when I remember I feel like I ruined everything cause now there’s a gaping hole of nothing in it and don’t go back to it :(