I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to focus. Terrified I’d get distracted by home life. That my productivity would plummet.
But it didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite. I never realised how much commuting and office noise harmed my productivity and energy levels. I was buzzing.
And I did what any ADDer would do.
I got drunk on it. Then burnt out.
In typical ADHD fashion, I thought all that new energy was permanent and I could work insane hours. Sometimes from 7am until 1am.
I was warned. But I didn’t listen - not to my mrs, not to my old man, my sister and colleagues.
And then, once the dust of lockdown settled, I burst.
After making damn sure that the company I worked for and my sisters business didn’t go bust, I couldn’t anymore.
The code I wrote only a few weeks before? Hieroglyphs. But not that I’d lost understanding. I knew I could read it if I wanted to.
But I really didn’t want to. Like my very being rejected any attempt to focus on the task at hand.
I was reduced to attending scrums. And playing video games.
It took a weekend away, a week off and a bit of advice from Dr Feynman.
Thankfully, work was understanding. I was given a project where I could play, and still deliver value. And so I played, got something small done. Then I played some more. And so on.
Now, a colleague works on the project with me. I played so much that I was prone to rabbit holes. My hyperfocus was out of tune.
But then I took stock and was able to focus. We found a way forward, took some advice, got speaking to the users and focused development on fast iteration and feedback.
The past few months have been the most productive of my life. All remote.
I learned a lot of hard lessons in lockdown. The lessons I could not predict.
I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to focus. Terrified I’d get distracted by home life. That my productivity would plummet.
But it didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite. I never realised how much commuting and office noise harmed my productivity and energy levels. I was buzzing.
And I did what any ADDer would do.
I got drunk on it. Then burnt out.
In typical ADHD fashion, I thought all that new energy was permanent and I could work insane hours. Sometimes from 7am until 1am.
I was warned. But I didn’t listen - not to my mrs, not to my old man, my sister and colleagues.
And then, once the dust of lockdown settled, I burst.
After making damn sure that the company I worked for and my sisters business didn’t go bust, I couldn’t anymore.
The code I wrote only a few weeks before? Hieroglyphs. But not that I’d lost understanding. I knew I could read it if I wanted to.
But I really didn’t want to. Like my very being rejected any attempt to focus on the task at hand.
I was reduced to attending scrums. And playing video games.
It took a weekend away, a week off and a bit of advice from Dr Feynman.
Thankfully, work was understanding. I was given a project where I could play, and still deliver value. And so I played, got something small done. Then I played some more. And so on.
Now, a colleague works on the project with me. I played so much that I was prone to rabbit holes. My hyperfocus was out of tune.
But then I took stock and was able to focus. We found a way forward, took some advice, got speaking to the users and focused development on fast iteration and feedback.
The past few months have been the most productive of my life. All remote.
I learned a lot of hard lessons in lockdown. The lessons I could not predict.