Has this helped long term and repeatedly? I have that same struggle of switching between things all my life even if I enjoy one activity a lot. Very occasionally I do find something I can sit and enjoy for hours but it is rare.
Sure, though I don't know how helpful it'll be to you or others. I basically had to change my career to get through things long term, but I do have some day-to-day techniques I follow listed down below. Hopefully some of it is useful.
I was a developer for 4 years after college, but I noticed I was struggling way more than my coworkers and friends in terms of just staying on task in a long term project for more than a few weeks at a time. In the short term I was at least as good as most, but after a while things just became impossible to keep focused on. I constantly asked my manager to be given different tasks or parts of the code to work on. This wasn't terrible because I was useful in many different parts of our code base, but eventually there weren't any parts of our project that I was interested in, and I couldn't see myself being interested in any other role where I had to code for the majority of it. I ended up switching into Software Sales Engineering.
Sales Engineering is, for me right now, the perfect role because I still get to think and work on some technical stuff, but no project is longer than 2-3 weeks which is about right for my ability to focus. There is also a huge dopamine hit at the end of a project because there's a clear endpoint. I'm not one of the Sales Engineers who needs to 'close' I just need to build out demo projects for a client until it's deemed a 'technical success'.
Some short term techniques I've learned for my own mind in just being productive (these were a lot more necessary when I was a developer but I still follow these in some way):
* Change my physical working location every 2 hours (COVID has sucked for this, but going to coffee shops and libraries helps a lot)
* Drink 1-3 cups of coffee in the morning, and 2-3 cups of tea the rest of the day (I've had to experiment with timings and doses a lot)
* Keep a hand-written TODO list and keep my eye on it throughout the day
-- For very boring topics or in difficult times, literally write down the scheduled time blocks I will spend on specific topics
* Also in very difficult times, I TRY not to look at the computer unless it's to work on my required tasks. Internet to me is seriously more addictive than anything I've experienced
Thank you very much for your perspective. This is useful to know.
I've basically found some methods to cope with my weird attention issues but since my methods are so unusual and essential for me to be focused it makes it difficult to work with others or keep up my own self-motivation.
I was wondering if there was a magic pill to solve some of these problems, but you've cleared up that it's a double-edged sword.
So you are on stimulants now that seem to help with your long term focus? Is there a concern of tolerance and dependency, like coffee/caffeine, where you'll have to keep upping the dose to get the benefit? Sorry if I'm being nosy but this is rather eye-opening to me and makes me think it might be worth speaking to my doc about this.
Is ADHD really tied to switching hobbies and jobs frequently? I suffer from this too, but I always thought ADHD was the inability to focus in the short term. I can have great focus on daily tasks if I’m interested in them, but my problem is I lose the interest so frequently that I can’t seem to make the leap beyond intermediate competency in a hobby or career direction.