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Programmers, ADHD, And How To Manage Them Both (with Chris Ferdinandi)
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This week we’re going to look at the most essential piece of firmware in a programmer’s toolkit - the brain. I’m joined by Chris Ferdinandi to explore what it’s like to be a programmer with ADHD. It’s an unusual topic for the channel, but the more I spoke to him, the more I wanted to know what coding is like when your brain is wired differently, how we can work more effectively with people with ADHD, and critically, how you manage coders with ADHD. And the answer to that comes full circle, in understanding how coders with ADHD manage themselves…
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Transcript
Introduction to Personality Theories
00:00:00
Speaker
There's a group of theories about people where what you do is you pick a small integer and you say, that's the number of kinds of people there are in the world. So if your integer is 12, we're probably going to be talking about horoscopes. There are 12 kinds of people in the world and you are such a typical Virgo. If the integer you pick is 16, that's going to give you Myers-Briggs, but I would say that because I'm an int j.
00:00:29
Speaker
Nine will give you the enneagram. Check your local new age bookstore for details of that one. Pick a small number like two. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. um A Japanese friend of mine tells me that there's quite a popular system where five is the number and it's based on blood types. Would you let your child marry a B positive?
00:00:52
Speaker
I personally don't subscribe to any of those systems. I think they're ridiculously reductive. I think the number of personality types in this world is somewhere north of eight billion. But traits, tendencies, ingredients in the personality cocktail, they definitely exist. And they're worth understanding and they're worth thinking about in yourself and in your friends and in your colleagues.
00:01:19
Speaker
They are important. They do exist.
ADHD in the Programming World
00:01:22
Speaker
Nevertheless, when this week's guest, Chris Ferdinandi, got in touch with me to say, would you like to talk about that very particular mix of neurological, psychological traits that we call ADHD? I nearly said no. I said this is a programming podcast and that's not quite on topic.
00:01:44
Speaker
But what I actually said to him was probably no, but let's chat. And I'm really glad we had that chat because I realized very quickly, this is absolutely a topic about programming and the people who do it. You may have ADHD, you will certainly end up working with people in the IT industry who have it. You may end up managing them.
00:02:07
Speaker
And on top of all that, there are some classic ADHD traits that we all experience to some degree from time to time as programmers. And understanding how to navigate those traits, even when we're doing on easy mode, is all in the service of building good things for people.
00:02:29
Speaker
So this week, we're going to take a look inside some particularly interesting programmers brains and see what we can learn. I'm your host, Chris Jenkins. This is Developer Voices. And today's voice is Chris Ferdinandi.
00:02:54
Speaker
Joining me today is Chris Ferdinandi. Chris, how are you? I'm doing great, Chris. Thank you so much for having me on the show. This is going to get confusing fast with the Chris and Chris. Chris and the Chris, yeah. um ah What can we do for that? We'll well we'll go by accent. ah right That should distinguish us pretty well. Oh, you think people can tell us apart? and I feel like I sound just like you, but okay. It's almost like you're coming straight in from BBC House. It's wonderful.
00:03:20
Speaker
Okay, so this is a bit of an unusual topic for our subject, but it's possibly like a deeply important and overlooked subject because you don't make software without working with other people. And the software world is filled with a lot of different people. And the specific topic here is ADHD, right? Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:41
Speaker
So let's start from your personal angle and get into this. You were diagnosed not too long ago, I gather. I was actually diagnosed. There's some debate around this. So I have, I have known I have had ADHD since I was a kid. So back in the, back in the eighties, um, this was when, um,
00:04:06
Speaker
This is one ADHD as a thing that we didn't know a lot about it. It was still kind of early in it its diagnosis phase. I actually think i I probably became aware I had it around the time when A lot of kids, especially younger boys, were starting to get diagnosed with it. So this was during that era where you would see people either just like hawk like just throw a ton of Ritalin at them or um it was one approach. The other was, oh, that's just kids being kids and this is not a real thing and everybody's making a big deal out of nothing.
00:04:39
Speaker
um which sadly you're still here today, but I'm still here today. my mom So my mom was really worried about the, um, like the stigma of, of ADHD. So I was never medicated. I was never treated for it. None of my teachers were ever told. Um, I,
00:04:57
Speaker
I ended up one of my one of my adult friends. ah his His parent was actually one of my teachers when I was younger, but we weren't like we weren't friends at the time. We didn't know each other. And I remember telling her like, oh, hey, by the way, I i i have ADHD. That probably is why I was such a menace in your classroom. And she's like, oh, yeah, obviously. I had no, i'd like everybody knew. it just They didn't, you know,
00:05:21
Speaker
my parents never told my teachers. But the reason I say there's some debate is um I was recently re-diagnosed because I'd never taken medication and I started to feel like I might want to. And there was no record of my diagnosis anywhere in my medical record. um And so in talking to my mom about who diagnosed me so I could go dig up those old childhood records,
00:05:44
Speaker
She told me that I was never actually officially diagnosed. I was just told by the doctor that I probably have it. But in my head, I knew I had it the whole time. So I am officially diagnosed with ADHD, but I have known I'm ADHD since I was like eight or nine years old. um so So, yeah, it's it's it's a wild ride. What's the difference there between the child knowing? I mean, did you know instinctively, do you mean, or you were just told and you accepted it? In my head, I had been told by someone I have ADHD and
00:06:16
Speaker
ah and And yeah, I i was, I don't know if this was because I had ADHD or whatever, but I was one of those people that I was just like, oh yeah, okay, cool. I've got ADHD. And I, part of the two is at, so at the time ADHD was largely thought of as the hyper kid thing. And it was 100% aligned with how I behaved. Like I was that hyper kid who,
00:06:39
Speaker
I could never sit still. I was always fidgeting with something. I would like rock in my chair or like bounce my feet all the time. It was really hard for me to like listen and stay focused and sit still and not disrupt other people. um And as you can probably tell, Chris, I have a tendency to talk really fast. So I have to work really hard to to rein that in just because the ideas are moving faster than the mouth. But um as a podcast host, that's perfect. I want like ideas just spewing out if you like a volcano. That's good. so um Yeah, I have recently learned as part of my Get Diagnosed Again process and this whole project um that ADHD in more recent years, they have learned that ADHD is a lot more than just being hyper. And a lot of the stuff that growing up I thought were just weird personal quirks of mine are ADHD things.
00:07:32
Speaker
and There's a lot of other people who have a lot of those same traits, and the internet has allowed us all to find each other, which is fantastic um because you feel a lot less alone. yeah but um But yeah, so um so that's kind of my story. i There's that whole in-between phase where um At some point in my late teens, I sound so dumb to say, but like I almost forgot I had it where I think because I always just thought of it as the hyper person thing. I didn't connect the dots between I have ADHD and wow, college is really hard. um I always thought it was just like, oh, i just I'm not
00:08:13
Speaker
I'm not trying hard enough or I'm not applying myself or like, but it's like, so as an example, just to make this a little bit more, more tactical ADHD folks generally have a tendency to um like really struggle to do things. They find boring. Like boredom is physically painful. It's related to our, our brain's lack of dopamine.
00:08:33
Speaker
And it goes beyond just the whole like time goes faster when you're having fun thing that like everybody experiences. It's like god almost like a fight or flight instinct kicks in the same way you can't put your hand over like ah an open flame on the stove because your body's like, no, you'll hurt yourself. yeah My brain won't let me do boring things.
00:08:49
Speaker
and um and you're And if you're in college or university, like there's a lot of there's a lot of things you have to do that are boring just as part of getting a degree. And ah I would just not do them, which did not did not necessarily always play well for like graduating in any sort of reasonable time, passing certain classes. I think I had like five different majors before I found one that was interesting enough that I would actually like graduate with it. It's anthropology. Love it. Fascinated by it. Do not work in the field of anthropology. I don't want to do it. I just, it's the only thing I could pay attention to long enough to actually like graduate with a degree in. Um, so yeah, anyways, that's, that's kind of that, that's what's, that's gotten me up to adulthood. Um, uh, and then it's been a string of Winnie the Pooh-esque moments of bouncing from one pot of honey to the next until I found one that actually stuck.
00:09:41
Speaker
Oh, I see. Yeah, like Tigger as much as we would be. Yeah. Yeah. Some people are like, I'm here. I want to be there in 10 years. Here's how I'm going to get there straight as line. And I just tend to wander through the forest doing whatever pleases me in that particular moment. So I went from anthropology
Understanding ADHD and Its Spectrum
00:10:01
Speaker
to human resources to i to web design, to eventually web development, um ah which is which is what got me here. But it was a very long and winding path. A lot of people come to programming through various interesting paths. They do. They do. i never I never really connected the dots, though, on until recently on like, oh,
00:10:23
Speaker
i am Yeah, I can't do long-term planning because like the thing I'm interested, I could be very interested in something for like a couple of weeks, couple of days, couple of weeks, months, years. And then one day it'll just turn off and I'm done and it's bored and I want nothing to do with it anymore. Um, there's this joke about like ADHDers have this graveyard of abandoned hobbies that like no one gets to see just like shoved in a closet somewhere. Yeah, I've heard that one, but this is like, um,
00:10:52
Speaker
This is the tricky thing where whenever anyone talks about these things, I recognize certain traits in myself, right? Like yeah I was a fidgety kid, but not excessively fidgety. yeahp I've not got a cupboard full of old hobbies, but I'm interested in things. ah there There's plenty of stuff I find hard to do because it's boring and I always chase what's most interesting, but I don't think I would be diagnosed with anything. Yeah. So this is, this is one of the,
00:11:22
Speaker
I don't wanna say fun things or confusing things. So that the thing with an ADHD diagnosis is it's not like um we're gonna run a blood test or a genetic test and we'll see like, oh, you have this chromosomal mutation or this bit of your DNA is different, you have it, right? It doesn't doesn't really work like that. um And so a lot of, I guess there's two things about ADHD that make it,
00:11:49
Speaker
both hard to diagnose and that often result in this kind of conversation. So the first is a lot of, ADHD is on a spectrum. There's a ah an assortment of traits that someone with ADHD may have, but not everyone with ADHD has all those traits and not everyone has them to the same degree. And a lot of those traits are um things that neurotypical folks will also experience to some degree.
00:12:16
Speaker
And so the thing that makes it like officially ADHD, it is sometimes subjective based on the person who's evaluating you and the evaluation process is literally like you get asked a bunch of questions about yourself, sometimes multiple times to try to like you know, weed out like false positives, like same question asked different ways, but he'll answer a bunch of questions. And ah each one gets like a rating. And if you're over a certain number, you, you have ADHD. And the, um the questions are
00:12:56
Speaker
you know, around how often you experience a variety of these traits. But they also try to account for, and was that always the case for you? So were you like that as a child as well? Or is it a more recent thing as an adult? Because while some traits will change over time, like, for example, I'm less hyper than I was as a child.
00:13:19
Speaker
um If you have ADHD, it's not the kind of thing that develops over time because you did a thing. It's just kind of an innate part of who you are. and So um where I was going with this was ah one of the i think one of the things you'll see with ADHD is I can talk about it and most people will be like, oh yeah, I have that sometimes. I have that sometimes. um Usually the degree to which I experience those things is a lot more severe than you.
00:13:44
Speaker
And it's not like a, it's not usually a sometimes thing for me. It's a a most or all of the time kind of thing. um And the unfortunate, I think, thing ah about that is, or I believe that's why you often see people who are like ADHD isn't a real thing, or you're just making it up, or like, I experience that sometimes too. I just, you know, like it's easy, you know, ah just just try harder, or just you just gotta work through it, right? Like the boredom thing, right? I don't like to do things that are boring.
00:14:14
Speaker
I don't like to do things that are boring. ie I sometimes can't force myself, often can't force myself to do them. And I don't think if you're someone who's neurotypical, it's sometimes difficult to understand what it's like to like literally not be able to get moving. There's this weird switch in your brain that just won't click on if you're someone with ADHD. I don't know how to explain it. um When I talk to other ADHD folks, I don't have to, which is nice, but um ah and we can talk about that too, like the shared empathy of neurodivergent folks. ah but um
00:14:51
Speaker
But yeah, so I'm sorry to bring this full circle, Chris, what you were saying is yes, there are nearly every ADHD trait is something that most people will experience sometimes occasionally even often. um A lot of ADHD traits are things that manifest in other um other conditions like autism um or OCD, ah a lot of them overlap with things like anxiety, um which a lot of people can experience intermittently depending on where they are and in life. um So you know it's not um it's not the kind of thing like as an ADHD, I don't have a monopoly on these sorts of things. I just experienced them in a slightly um a a slightly different package than a neurotypical person might.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah. I've heard some people say it's, it's like the difference between finding it hard to climb uphill and the difficulty but actually walking through a wall. One might be hard, but the other you physically cannot do. That's yeah. I would agree with that analogy. Um, I would agree with that analogy. And you know, every trait is a little bit different too. Like for example, I, um, uh,
00:16:02
Speaker
I guess if we were to talk about some of the some of the different symptoms. right So like one of the... um yeah know There are things like impulse control, ah emotional dysregulation. So a lot of ADHDers have really difficult time regulating their emotion, which can read lead to um what often seem like tantrums or like bursts of anger, much bigger emotional responses than like a neurotypical person might think is normal, which can create some really awkward social situations and an ability to perceive time accurately, right? And so all of these, I think I'm using these as examples of I um ah i have a much tougher time with emotional regulation
00:16:48
Speaker
than a couple of my ADHD friends do. um I also know some folks who have even a harder time with emotional regulation than I do. um But you know i have I have a handful of friends with ADHD who are really, really good at stopping that that runaway emotional response and responding to people in very like diplomatic or political ways. I am not one of those people. like i If I have a thought, it's out of my mouth before my brain is even registered. It's coming. um If I feel an emotion around a thing, I'm telling you about it before I've had a chance to like stop and process it even most of the time. ah so This is something I want to get into because yeah If I just picked on two of those traits that you mentioned, some of them seem naturally um like they would fit neatly with a career in programming and some not. like yes For instance, the ability to lose track of time is actually probably ah overall a good thing as a programmer.
00:17:44
Speaker
and Lack of emotional regulation will lead to you throwing your laptop out of the window or at your boss. There have been days where I've wanted to. that' is for sure We've all had days where we've wanted to. So you're coming to this from a programmer's angle. I am. Are there aspects of this you think but It's a tricky one to get to, because what I'm trying to think is, are there some traits that lend themselves well to aquarium programming? And is there maybe a tendency for people who are non-neurotypical to move into this field?
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah, so there's there's the big picture version of this and then there's the the tactical in the weeds version of this conversation. I think both are important. I want to start with the high level and then get into the weeds a little bit if that's okay with you, Chris. So on the high level, um the the thing we didn't touch on um that we probably should ah is that um ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a really poorly named condition because Not everyone who has it is hyperactive. So that H is like a question mark. um And people with ADHD don't actually have a deficit of attention. If anything, we have too much of it and we have trouble regulating or focusing it. So some days we will be
00:19:09
Speaker
Focused on a dozen or more different things and our brain will bounce from one to the other really quickly it's like if you've ever seen like ah a bunch of puppies and You can throw like one ball and they'll run after it But as soon as another one gets tossed they abandon the first one and run after that. It's a little bit like that, right? Yeah yeah But other days we are laser focused on just one thing to the detriment of everything else around us. Like you cannot, you cannot break us from it. Um, it's called hyper focus. It can be awful or awesome depending on what you're hyper focused on. Uh, if it's something you should be or not, you know, like it's, it's, I have an important work task. I'm focused on that. Great. If I'm focused on like, Ooh, I wonder, I wonder if I should buy a caravan and travel, travel across Europe for a bit. Like, yeah no, that's all you'll do. You won't do your work. That's bad. But, um,
00:19:53
Speaker
all of them All of the different ADHD traits, I should say all of them, but the the main biological difference in an ADHD brain that seems to drive a majority of these behaviors is that ADHD brains do not have enough dopamine, which is a really important neurotransmitter related to learning, um memory retention, working memory, um emotional regulation, perception of time, a whole bunch of other things. It's unclear if people with ADHD don't make enough of it, if our brains absorb
00:20:30
Speaker
what we make too fast um or some combination of the both that might even vary from person to person. um But the the key thing there is is the dopamine, we don't have enough of it. And so a lot of the um a lot of the treatments around ADHD to help you manage it more effectively are focused on either getting your brain to make more of it or preventing your brain from absorbing the stuff that it does make as quickly so more of it floats around. So the thing with all of this though is um Programming, I find, tends to lend itself to several different types of neurodivergence quite well, and ADHD in particular because of the short feedback loops that you get that create that nice dopamine, like just steady drip of dopamine. So I'm thinking about like I'm working on, you know, whether it's a UI thing or a backend, like more logic driven thing, there's this really nice cycle of I write some code, I run it,
00:21:31
Speaker
it works awesome now i've got that dopamine spike right it almost feels a little bit like um like when you play mario brothers and like i got the mushroom i stepped on on the bad guy's head i made that jump right um it's not necessarily gamified but you're getting that like constant like a little bit more dopamine a little bit more dopamine that keeps you moving um yeah and he really like lost in the task um or There's a bug and now I've got a side quest that I get to dive on to figure out why and you can get really sucked into the problem solving aspect of it. um but So yeah, I think the kind of the high level thing for me is I often find that ADHD folks are overrepresented in the tech or developer space. And I think a large part of why is because
Programming and ADHD: A Natural Fit?
00:22:20
Speaker
There's a lot of things about coding that are really exciting for the way an ADHD brain is wired um and just kind of the biochemistry of how our brains work. um ah There's this. I can see I can see that the the feedback loop driving dopamine. I can also see why if it's um caused by a lack of dopamine or possibly absorbing it too quickly, why everybody has had those kinds of experiences to a small degree.
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah. Right. you know Yeah. Yeah. Cause you will have days where you're just as a person, your brain is not. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not making enough for your feeling kind of glove, your norepinephrine levels are off, whatever it happens to be. Right. yeah and Um, yeah. The other thing with, with ADHD, there's this,
00:23:06
Speaker
There's this list of like motivational triggers. You'll often hear for ADHD folks. So it's novelty. Something is new, exciting. Um, it's something you personally find interesting. It's something that's challenging or it's something where there's like an urgency. Like I've got a looming deadline and programming often has at least three, sometimes all four of those. Um, yeah. So it's just as a, as a profession, uh, just really, really lends itself well to ADHD brains.
00:23:35
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I can totally see that. And also, I don i say this sensitively, but kind of as growing up as a kid in the 80s, before computers were cool, right you had this thing like, it's where all the people that didn't fit in seemed to hang out, right? You got the jock the jocks and the sporty people and all the others, and then everyone else is just in the corner.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, if you're and we we grew up around the same era, Chris. And so if you're if you grew up in that era and you a lot of ADHD folks feel like they don't fit and it's not there. are There are plenty of of really accomplished athletes who have ADHD like Simone Biles, right? ADHD. But um ah if If you are someone who grew up feeling like you didn't necessarily fit in with other people, which a lot of neurodivergent folks, a lot of folks with ADHD do,
00:24:30
Speaker
In that era, the 80s, the 90s, computers were absolutely, especially once the web showed up, like an escape, a place where you could find other people like you, where you could connect with other, I use this term endearingly, like other weirdos, right? You could find your you could find your your group of people that you couldn't in the real world. and yeah yeah um And yeah, I think if I had to guess, I would imagine that's why a lot of us are in the computer space now as well. um Yeah, that would make sense to me. So that kind of raises two separate threads of questions and we'll have to figure out how we're going to tackle these. One is, are there ways in which, let's start with this one. Are there ways in which you can sort of play your own brain to your advantage in this world? We've already briefly touched on the advantages, but like, if you find you can't do boring things and boring things come up, how can you play that?
00:25:26
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so this is um this is where we we start to get into the, so you've got the high level, yes, programming ADHD good. When you get into the nitty gritty, it's a lot more nuanced than that because I'll look at something like time blindness. so Dopamine is related to your brain's perception of time, and if you don't have enough of it, um you can perceive time weirdly. and so I think most neurotypical folks, if you're someone who doesn't have ADHD, you can probably relate to the whole like
00:25:58
Speaker
Oh, time seems like it goes by really fast when I'm having fun and it feels like it takes forever when I'm bored. So that is in an evergreen state of being four ah for someone with ADHD. But even when I've enjoyed a thing and I've done it and I've had fun, um I can almost never reliably tell you how long I have been doing a thing. This is like the bane of my wife's existence because I will remember things that happened And, um you know, I'll be like, Oh, you just you just said this yesterday, or we just talked to it. She's like, that was like, I was like, two months ago, like what I didn't know. extreme I cannot slot things accurately into when they happened in space and time. I just I know how they made me feel, or um whether I was like, excited, bored, mad, tired, whatever. Right. um So
00:26:46
Speaker
ah For certain programming tasks, that can be great because you can get really lost in them. And I could spend a whole day, a day and a half, just completely lost in my code and feel like no time at all has gone by. It's it's like a U4. Have you ever been in like the flow or the zone? Yeah, absolutely. like It's like that, but like time's 10. It just feels great.
00:27:11
Speaker
um The flip side is some programming tasks require you to know a lot about how long things are going to take you or how much time you spent. So I think generally estimating how long a coding task is going to take is hard hard because there's a lot of variables you can't always factor for. But like even like really simple tasks like small little um like feature updates and things, it could be something I've done a hundred times before.
00:27:38
Speaker
I cannot accurately tell you how long it's going to take me. If I did a task and I didn't have some sort of timer running to track that task, I am i can't tell you how long it took me. um And so ah there's a lot of little things like that, just various aspects of how the ADHD brain works that can be really helpful in some contexts and really challenging in others. And they um they vary depending on the type of job you're in. So certain jobs care more about tracking hours than others or a type time estimates like ah an agency role cares a lot about that. and Those are very bad for me. um So to dig into that, would would that kind of, do you feel like that would exclude you from that kind of job?
Embracing ADHD Strengths in the Workplace
00:28:25
Speaker
I have found that for me personally, well, so here's the double-edged sword. Agency jobs can also be really exciting for ADHDers because depending on the type of agency, you might be getting lots of different clients with lots of different problems from lots of different industries. So you're not gonna be doing the same thing over and over again and you're not gonna get bored. So that part of it can be great. The hourly bit can be really awful depending on the type of agency. So I have found for me,
00:28:54
Speaker
my time blindness is sufficiently bad enough that I avoid agency roles. because they just do not fit well for me and how my brain works. um And I have i've found tools and systems that help me get around it. Like I have have this timing app that nags me if it's not running and I'm using my computer so I don't forget. If I walk away from my computer and forget to stop it, it tracks that and like, hey, you were gone for four hours. Do you want this time or should I throw it to away? You know, like that kind of thing.
00:29:25
Speaker
um but even with that in place my inability to say oh yeah that'll take us 10 hours and then actually reliably do it in those 10 hours just creates too many problems with client interactions in most agency roles for me um and so I I avoid those types of jobs I have ADHD friends who their time blindness is either not as bad or they have gotten sufficiently good at they'll just make a number up and they'll make sure they hit it and they they enjoy that work. I don't want to I don't call it the stress but like the the urgency effect right the pressure that creates of like I said a deadline I'm gonna get it done regardless I hate that level of stress but I know some people really thrive on it and
00:30:11
Speaker
This is where we get into that whole that spectrum thing again, where my ADHD is different from someone else's ADHD and understanding the the mix of traits you have and how they work best for you. um yeah So I wouldn't necessarily say ADHD folks don't do well in agency roles, but for a certain type of ADHD person, they can be really, really awful. And a lot of it is about understanding your brain, the areas that um the way that your ADHD like can work to your advantage and where it creates those challenges. And then I am one of the, and I think this is true for neurotypical folks too, but like I firmly believe that trying to shore up your weaknesses is a path to ruin. Um, you're, you're much better off focusing on the things you're awesome at and like leaning heavily into them as much as possible. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. So let me flip that on its head because yeah.
00:31:05
Speaker
um from like i've I've been a manager of software teams in my past, and probably the only significant thing I learned about management that's non-obvious is that you've got to figure out what motivates each person on your team. There is no one size or fits all motivation. Yeah.
00:31:26
Speaker
And it seems like it seems like from what you're saying, if I were to employ you, you would be a particularly tricky, puzzled figure out, but particularly reliable one once I'd figured it out. Potentially, yes. So. um So there are. Yeah, what do I so.
00:31:52
Speaker
This is an interesting, I, you're asking me to be introspective, which is, which is always good, but it always takes me a minute to gather my thoughts. So I'm sorry about that. But I'm thinking about my own, my own brain. I actually had this conversation with someone recently, so it should be a little bit more top of mind, but I am my, my motivational triggers actually vary a bit from day to day. So I will have, I will have days where I, my brain is just not, yeah you know, sometimes like you need to like, this is like, you're old enough that you'll remember when you used to have to like defrag your computer because it would like start running poorly, right? Like memory i there are days where I just need to defrag my brain. It is not like running as efficiently as it could. And on those days I find that like doing,
00:32:45
Speaker
doing a bunch of like really tiny feature request ads or small bug fixes is really good for my brain because I don't have to, um but you don't have to think when you're doing a like ah a bug fix kind of thing, but yeah yeah there's less of the like high level strategic, I need to like really think through what's the end user experience and how are all these pieces going to fit? You know, it's less big picture than that. It's more like just pulling it threads. So I will have days where like that's my jam.
00:33:16
Speaker
um I will have other days where I'm in like big creative mode. And on those kinds of days, being thrown like a brand new like, hey, we've got this really challenging thing we want to build, and we don't even know where to start. Like, that'll be my thing. And so I i have found that for me, um roles where I have a bit more autonomy over like, here's a bucket of tasks.
00:33:39
Speaker
pick and choose the one, you know like these are the you even if it's like some sort of, you know here's the priority on these things, work within that. But one where I have the freedom and flexibility to choose what I'm working on on any particular day within that that kind of like framework or bucket of tasks.
00:33:57
Speaker
works really, really well for me. Um, because I will have days or weeks where I, I would just get lost in some sort of big, Harry new greenfield kind of thing. And then I'll have like a week or two where I just want to do, um, I call it more mundane or wrote kind of coding tasks where I don't have to think as much because my brain just doesn't have, just doesn't have that energy. Um, and that is, that is definitely something that can be challenging for um You know a ah manager like how do you? How do you figure out how to work within within that? I think the big thing for me is if you're assigning me tasks There's a high likelihood you're going to assign them wrong If you give me the flexibility to pick and choose or even have like a small set of tasks So that on any given day like you know, I'm working on these three things on any given day. I can choose which one I focus on um ah That works out much better for me
00:34:53
Speaker
um And I think where a lot of folks earlier in their ADH journey struggle is they don't always know that about themselves yet, right? They know, they know they've struggled with certain things on certain days, but they don't necessarily understand like, these are the things that work for me. Here's how my brain, here's how my brain works or this thing was really fine yesterday. Today I just can't get going on it. Like what, nothing changed. What is, what is happening, right? Like yeah being able to,
00:35:21
Speaker
yeah understand that your brain will vary from day to day, that um ah yeah i'm i'm I'm running out of steam on this question, Chris, I could feel myself like the answer starting to slip away from me, from my my limited working memory. um But hopefully that gave you some semblance of of yeah what you were but you were asking there.
00:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. the The strange thing I find is that it's all very relatable. I mean, I can totally empathize with that. And I think what you're saying is it's a question of degree because I have days like that, but not like chronically. you Yeah, it's really, and I'll give you like a ah more, a more specific example too, right? So in my last, um, like in-house developer job, I,
00:36:09
Speaker
I had a role where my day-to-day job was theming this white label software we had for various clients. So Adidas or Adidas would come to us, and I'd make it look like their brand. or British Airways would come to us. I'd make it look like their brand. right And then they'd yeah they'd run it as their own kind of it was cloud hosted, but their domain and everything.
00:36:33
Speaker
After a while, that started to get really tedious because everybody's asking for variations of the same thing. And really, the only thing that's changing is the color, the typeface, and a couple of like elements on the page. right yeah So um I I remember when I just took a week and I was like, i rather than doing client work this week, I'm just going to build some design system around this thing so I can swap a couple of CSS variables and the thing will be done in like an hour and a half instead of the 20 hours it's been taking me to do it from scratch every time. Yeah. And so I got lost in that for like a week and it was awesome.
00:37:10
Speaker
and then i kind of like I crashed and I felt really bored for like a week or two after that. And then like fast forward a few months, i had um you know we had started to get some bigger clients that were asking for more complex things than our software could do. And I was like, oh, I could um i could do some thing. where like i the The short version of this is the backend had been built by a bunch of developers in the startup phase of the company, and none of them were there anymore. And so you had this undocumented code base written in PHP that no one wanted to touch because it was mission critical, but no one knew how to fix it. So if something broke, it would break for a bunch. Yeah, so it just, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had all these things that people wanted, but no one would touch it to add the things. And I'm like, all right, well, what if I wrote something that like,
00:37:59
Speaker
scraped the stuff that was there and then like, render the UI with JavaScript instead. It was kind of a hacky way to do things, but like it filled a need, right? So I, I probably did like six months worth of work in three weeks. Like I, I just went into this tunnel and then, um,
00:38:19
Speaker
And then when I came out of it, I was really burnt out. And so for probably like two months after that, I was just on coast mode, right? And so if you look at my performance reviews at this company, yeah I was like top rated at seeds expectations, didn't quite meet expectations. Exceeds expectations, it's like this yo-yo effect of I'm either really, really good or like little underperforming. And um it, ah And they did like quarterly reviews too, which was kind of annoying because you know like ah if you looked in aggregate over the course of the year, I was at the very least meeting my expectations often more, but any what you know was it was like really like condensed into these pockets of I would do a lot and then I would have some some like downtime and then I would do a lot and then I would have some downtime.
00:39:12
Speaker
ah and That is, in a traditional work environment, that can be really difficult ah to manage and to work within. How would you, in an ideal world, like to be managed? Or do you think that it's like mostly on you to manage that situation? Yeah, that's a great question. so I think about the best manager I ever had. um but There was actually two of them. um Both of them were pretty pivotal in my like my career and the structure of my career, but both of them did a very similar thing ah where they would they would typically come to me with, hey, there's this there's this thing we're trying to do. I don't know how to do it. I don't even have the time to look into it. Can you just run with it and come back to me when you have something that I can look at?
00:40:05
Speaker
And it wasn't like, I want a presentation on options. It was like, go build something and then we can like poke at it and see if it works. yeah um and The only time I would ever come back to those managers was when I had roadblocks that I couldn't get through myself where I needed someone to make an internal extra introduction or pull out a credit card to buy some software we needed or something like that. right like Their job was just to remove roadblocks and then stay out of the way.
00:40:36
Speaker
and in for both of those managers, I had more career success than pretty much any job I've ever had. Um, and so, uh, I guess this is all a long winded way of saying that I personally thrive better when I am pointed in a direction and then managed as little as possible. Like if you give me some, it's almost like, I don't know. Um, I don't know if they do this over in the UK, but like here in the U S if you have a little kid who's bowling, they'll,
00:41:08
Speaker
I don't know if you even call it that, where you you roll the ball and you knock down the pins. yeah but they'll put the the But they'll put the bumpers and the gutters so the ball doesn't go down. So you give me those, you give me some guard so I don't go just go completely out of left field. right Like here's the hey they go braille here's the direction you need to move in. Just try to knock down as many of those pins as you can. And then just let me go. um That tends to be where I really thrive. um In particular, because I am highly motivated by big challenges, especially if there's some sort of like, I need something by like, come back to me on this date, right? um And it just, it pulls out enough of those lepers for me.
00:41:48
Speaker
but I have met other ADHD folks, though, who find that too open-ended. Without the structure of someone checking in on them regularly, they feel like they'll just put it off until the last minute and then and then get nothing done. um so you know i Again, it a lot of it varies by person, but that's me. That's where I do best. Okay, so then that's the tricky thing. is it if Let me phrase it this way and you can you can shoot me, right? If ADHD is a diagnosis, like doesn't tell me much about how the individual will operate, that's correct then how much use is that label?
00:42:32
Speaker
This is a fair question.
00:42:37
Speaker
So I think the label is more useful for the individual with the ADHD than a person who is managing the person with the ADHD because knowing I have ADHD gives me i'm just I'm describing both my own experience and then I've heard from a bunch of, um because i do I do coaching, I have some courses, and I've heard from some of my students that like having someone describe, here are the different ways ADHD affects your brain and some of the things that may happen to you. Them being able to, oh, that's that's why I'm like that. Even though it doesn't change anything about how you are, it suddenly gives you this thing to be like, oh,
00:43:20
Speaker
I'm not um not broken. it's just it's It's this thing with my brain chemistry. Now I know that I can come up with some strategies around it. And so as a person with ADHD,
00:43:32
Speaker
having a, I think I even described it, cause we had talked about this little like off show. I think I had maybe described it as a menu, right? Where you've got, you've got a bunch of really a buffet. You've got a bunch of different things you can pick and choose from. You don't really get to pick them. They just, yeah they they pay you know, it's a prefix menu, but yeah um you, um yeah you've got, you've got these collection of traits that may apply and knowing that you have them,
00:44:01
Speaker
can provide you with a framework for understanding how your brain works and then identifying some strategies that might work around them. And like one of the other one of the other thing reasons I think the diagnosis is important is because I think about something like... So ADHD folks tend to... um ah You know, we put off things a lot of times until there's a deadline. I'll just use an example, right? ah A lot of advice for folks with ADHD.
00:44:36
Speaker
around that, that I've seen, that I can tell is written by neurotypical people is give yourself a deadline that's earlier than when it's actually done, put it in your calendar, and then that'll be the deadline you work towards, and and you'll you'll get it done beforehand. You won't have that stress. That sounds very simple. That's Chris. My brain knows I made that date up. That's not a real date. The real date is this other thing. That's the one I'm going to wait for. right and that kind of advice might work for a neurotypical person it doesn't work for most people with adhd so even though the problem. Is the same i put things off until the deadline the solution is going to be very different with adhd because of biological brain chemistry differences um and so.
00:45:22
Speaker
Actually, answer your question. I feel like I keep throwing a bunch of information out before I actually like address the point. But to actually get to the point that you were talking about, the diagnosis is useful for ADHD folks to be able to look at. here are here's Here are the traits that could apply. Here are the ones I have. Here are some specific solutions that typically work for folks with that trait with ADHD because of how our brains work.
00:45:48
Speaker
And then the ADHD person can have a more informed conversation with you, the manager, about how they work best. And yeah I suppose as a manager, that's true for all employees, right? Like everybody has their own quirks and preferences and ways that they work best. um But yeah, I don't think you can say, oh, I have people with ADHD. I need to treat them like this. There are, I think, a couple of exceptions that we can we can pick out a little bit if you want, but generally,
00:46:19
Speaker
It's, I think it's more a tool for the person to know more about themselves and how they work. Yeah. I wonder if it's like, I think everybody needs to figure out how they are motivated internally. And I think every manager needs to figure out how their employees are motivated externally. And perhaps it's just really saying in the case of people with ADHD, you really have to, because it's really not going to work unless you do.
00:46:47
Speaker
yeah I think that's fair to say. And I also think one of the other reasons why the diagnosis is useful is a lot of, especially I talked to a lot of more, like I was diagnosed, not me, people who were diagnosed recently who have a lot of internalized feelings of I just suck. I'm not, I'm not capable of this. I can't do it because a lot of the,
00:47:16
Speaker
i I ran into this really early in my career. I thought I was going to get fired from my first job because ah nothing that was being asked of me was too difficult. I just kept missing deadlines, for forgetting to do things I had committed to. And I didn't know why. And I started down the whole like getting things done David Allen productivity path. And all of the advice would work for like a week or three and then it wouldn't anymore. And I started to really feel like ah something's wrong with me.
00:47:43
Speaker
and um And understanding that a lot of advice written for and by neurotypical folks doesn't work for, like the problems will be the same, but the solutions are different because of how your brain works is a really important A really important thing where I think for neuro tip of everybody when they first hit the working world, maybe not everybody, but a lot of folks struggle with I have to do things I don't like. This is boring. How do I deal with interwork like politics and conflicts, all that stuff. But a lot of this, the ah guidance you see out there.
00:48:17
Speaker
is written with the idea that you're someone who can effectively regulate your emotions, can just work through tasks that you don't like, even if they're a little bit difficult,
Navigating Corporate Culture with ADHD
00:48:29
Speaker
right? Like, this sucks, I'm bored, I'll just get it done. and um And yeah, it's when your brain doesn't work that way, having the words and the language to talk about why can be really, really helpful.
00:48:40
Speaker
Um, yeah, yeah. And it can become a bit like, um, it can become a bit like faith healing, right? If it works and if it didn't work, you should have done it harder. Yeah, basically, basically. Yeah. but Just, just try hard. Just, just yeah just do more of what I told you would work. The one, the one exception to everything I've just said, I shouldn't say the one exception, but there are some exceptions to the whole, uh,
00:49:07
Speaker
You know, like you can't you can't look at someone with ADHD and just assume a whole bunch of things about how they'd prefer to work. But I think one one area where I have found that is almost universally not true is around the cost of interruptions. So um where a neurotypical person can be Working on a task, get asked a question, pivot right back to the task.
00:49:41
Speaker
And I understand, like if you're in a flow state and someone breaks that, it can be really difficult. But like, you know, you're just, you're plugging away at something, you're writing an email, someone asks you a question, you get right back to it, right? um ah but Many neurotypical folks can just re-divert right back in. Nearly universally, I have found ADHD people struggle really, really hard with task switching and the cost of a pop-in, a Slack message, um a midday meeting is substantially higher than it would be for a neurotypical person. And so I guess if I had to say one kind of universal truth for someone who manages someone that they know has ADHD, interrupting them less, setting up an environment where they are not as interrupted, whether it's
00:50:30
Speaker
kind of batching meetings on a specific day or like around a particular time earlier or later in the day yeah um or even just batching your questions or setting up an expectation that you don't have to keep your email client open. If I have questions, I'll send them by email unless they're like urgent and I need an answer right now. So you can just, you can ignore those and check them once or twice, like giving, giving that permission. Cause I think a lot of places have a cultural expectation of like, I emailed you, I want to hear back in and why didn't I hear back from you yet?
00:50:58
Speaker
It's been an hour and a half. um Yeah, giving understanding that those those interruptions, every interruption can set someone with ADHD back 15 minutes, and an hour more. um ah Midday meetings are the worst. right um I did create this like temporal dead zone.
00:51:19
Speaker
where like if you finish a task and then you've got a meeting coming up in 30 minutes, 40 minutes, you won't do anything else. You'll just wait for the meeting because you know that by the time you get into the flow of work,
00:51:30
Speaker
you'll have to stop and then you'll either be frustrated or you'll forget that you had your meeting and you'll miss it. Um, so you just, you do nothing. Um, yeah, I can totally relate to that, but again, it's a question of degree, right? Yeah. Yeah. So thats i think if if if I had to identify one like, Hey, Chris, if you have ADHD employees, like this is the one big thing I could tell you, like they're all going to appreciate it's, you know, reduce interruptions. Yeah. And the non ADHD employees won't mind it too. I'm sure they won't. Yeah, no, for sure. It's a win-win.
00:52:00
Speaker
Okay, so let me again, sort of like, I'm thinking about relatable things and fighting yeah let me ask you the degree. So like, i I struggle. Struggle is not quite the word, but like, if I find something boring, it's going to be a slog to get it done. And I find the only strategy that works for me is to try and find what's interesting about the boring task. Yeah.
00:52:22
Speaker
right like There's got to be something interesting about doing my tax return. right no and Until I find it. There's got to be something. You're in the UK. That must be better for you than over here. got Depends. In my case, no. I have oh self a complex working life. yeah yeah ah so i mean are there Are there anything like that? Are there strategies to game it for yourself?
00:52:45
Speaker
So um there's this there's this thing called, I'm gonna answer your question with an anecdote first, and I'm so sorry, but there's this this thing called the ADHD tax where we are so notoriously bad at, well, I'm just gonna find the interesting thing and I'll just get it done, that ah we often end up,
00:53:05
Speaker
paying more either in terms of social or real economic penalties because we put off important things. So like that tax return, it's boring. I just don't do it.
00:53:19
Speaker
now I have a whole bunch of like late fees and assessments that I have to pay or that kind of thing. So ah this is a real problem. um the There's a few different strategies that one with ADHD can employ. employ um The first is if it's a task that you can offload to someone else, and I don't mean this in like the, I'm just gonna delegate all my crap work to someone else, but like if you can find They're going to be things that you you hate doing so much you won't do them. um So cleaning cleaning the home is a really big one. A lot of ADHD folks have just absolutely messy homes because they're really, really ah it can be really, really boring. um And so there's a few stra like if you can afford to. Paying someone to clean your home so that you don't have to is a very valid strategy. Obviously, there's a whole bunch of like
00:54:13
Speaker
kind of privilege and colonial angles you could pick at with that, like who are you paying to do your work and that sort of thing. But just as a general as a general rule of thumb, if you can pay someone else to do it, tax returns, right? In the US, there's a whole cottage industry around that. I will happily pay someone else to do that, so I don't have to worry about it.
00:54:30
Speaker
um Uh, so that, that is one angle. Um, the other is something similar to what you described where, um, I will again use like ah menial house chores as an example, but like I, I don't enjoy folding laundry, but I enjoy folding laundry because I will throw on a show, ah like a YouTube thing, a podcast. I do that with mowing the lawn too where um you know I've got i've got my my garden space outside. I'll throw my noise canceling headphones on and a podcast and it is my relaxation time. ah you know It's a boring task that I have made interesting.
00:55:14
Speaker
by layering in something that I enjoy. And that only works with the kind of tasks that don't involve, I need to think about the thing while I'm doing the thing, right? Cause like, yeah yeah if I need to think about it, I'm not going to be able to listen to the podcast, watch the show. But if it's like just a mind, lab I'm walking, right? There you go. um yeah If you struggle with exercise and you have ADHD, watch a show while you do it, right? Or listen to a podcast and um and it can, it can help. um And then the other, the other thing with,
00:55:42
Speaker
folks with ADHD and tasks that you find boring is ah oftentimes the issue is not that the task is boring, but that it's too big. Like it can be boring too, but often the boring tasks feel boring because they're so big and you don't even know where to start. And so a strategy that I often employ is, um, uh,
00:56:11
Speaker
Imagine that task is a giant boulder and you're trying to roll it, right? Like rolling rolling the big boulder is going to be really, really hard. But if you can break that boulder into some smaller pieces, you can eventually move the whole thing by moving those smaller parts. You want to hit it with a sledgehammer. And so I will often take that big task or that boring task, and I will try to rip it down into its its atomized parts. like what is the what is the What are all the different things that I need to do here? And then I will pick the smallest, usually the most insignificant. A lot of neurotypical advice will say, now pick the most important thing and get that done first.
00:56:50
Speaker
That's a fool's errand when you have ADHD, Chris, because usually the most important thing is the thing that involves burning the most like brain energy. And ADHD brains have like a lot of issue with like inertia and getting moving. right so yeah um So I recommend you pick the smallest, most insignificant, easiest, this will only take me five minutes task, and do that. Because you do that, and you get to cross it off your list. And now you get a little dopamine spike. And now you're like, oh, OK, I can do the next biggest thing.
00:57:19
Speaker
And eventually, you start moving enough that the task um much like a boulder rolling down a hill, the task has now started to carry itself and it drags you along with it, whether you want to or not. Yeah. Yeah. Some things have a moat, like a momentum that needs to get yeah started. Exactly. So once it gets going, you're just going to keep working on it because you're already in the thick of it. But the getting started is often the hardest part. And so I, I will find I, I will put off tasks for days, weeks, months. And then once you start doing it,
00:57:55
Speaker
Why don't you just, you you pull that one little thread. It becomes much easier to unravel the whole sweater because you, you know, you just, you started, but the starting is the hard part. Um, and so reducing as much friction in the starting process.
00:58:10
Speaker
as possible is like the real the real trick there. um But I am also, i'm a big I'm a big fan of like, if I don't want to do something, I just won't, I'll find a way to either make it a thing I don't have to do at all or um or I'll put it off until the last possible minute. I know that about myself. um It just ends up being a thing that that happens sometimes and I just i live with that.
00:58:33
Speaker
The difficult thing is, this is almost like the first year med student problem. The longer you talk and the more I relate to what you're saying, the more I feel like I should go and get diagnosed myself, which might which might be the day I've been waiting for for several years. But like, give me the counterexample then. what is it actually What is it actually like when it's going wrong? What's your experience at the worst end of your symptoms, not the best?
00:58:59
Speaker
okay so um there are There are a few different ways this manifests. So one of them is boredom. I've got a bunch of tasks. I have, even though it's not a bunch of tasks, I have a really important work task to do. It's due tomorrow. I find it so boring that the,
00:59:26
Speaker
the protect your body from pain impulse of the boredom is outweighing the, ooh, you have something urgent. You better do that effect that would otherwise get me to move. And I will sit at my computer and stare at a screen for eight damn hours and get nothing done.
00:59:49
Speaker
Just sit there and do nothing. No, this doesn't happen to me as much anymore because I've learned how to rip these tasks apart. But I have I'm the worst of my ADHD days. I have had days like that where you will stare at a screen for eight hours and get absolutely nothing done or you've got a big task to do but you've got a meeting coming up in an hour and a half and you really wore you know this task is really like brain intensive so you don't want to get into this task yet you want to wait until after the meeting so you'll try to do a bunch of like all answer some emails and I'll do some other thing when the meeting happens in the meetings done and now you're drained of energy cuz a really long hour and a half meeting that like.
01:00:26
Speaker
The VP was there and you're like, you're emotionally drained. So you're going to go do something else for a bit until you have more energy. And oh, now it's dinner time. And you've got nothing of import done. You've done you've done things. You've been at your computer all day. You haven't done anything you needed to do. um So that is one thing. The other thing that happens is, ah and this is not exclusive to ADHD, but uh uh it's the freeze response and this is a like a fight or flight you know in horror movies where like the the the villain shows up and the person just stands there instead of like running away or they don't fight they don't flight they just let it happen and you're like how could you do that um in
01:01:08
Speaker
overwhelming situations, there is a biological response that happens where your brain, unable to decide to to run or attack, will do neither. It'll just possum and yeah yeah yeah just just freeze up. um And it's the same thing where the tidal waves right and you just see people staring at it as it like rolls over them. right like it's um yeah You're overwhelmed. So because one of the big symptoms that most people with ADHD have is very bad working memory. we have um ah In computer terms, we have a huge hard drive and very limited RAM, so we pinwheel a lot. and ah swap i If I have a task that has um
01:01:55
Speaker
just a lot of moving parts and it's really, really big and I can't figure out where to start. I've even like done the analysis of what needs to get done, but there's like eight different things I could do and I'm not sure which one is the right one or I'm faced with a business decision and I could do three or four different things and there's no clear right choice. I will do nothing. I will just, I'll stand there metaphorically. I'll sit there at my computer frozen.
01:02:21
Speaker
unable to make a decision and start typing and, or grab a pen and start writing on my notebook, whatever it happens to be. Um, and it's very similar to what I just described with the, um, with the boredom effect, except this time it's not that I'm bored. I could even be excited by the thing. I'm just overwhelmed by where to start. And so I won't.
01:02:44
Speaker
So relating back to what you said earlier, is that the point at which the manager should now come in and narrow your task list right back down for you? Ooh, I hadn't thought. So when I'm in that space, I wouldn't necessarily even think sometimes to ask because I'm so overwhelmed. But you are right. Having a manager come in and say, do this can be helpful.
01:03:10
Speaker
um If it's something that I find boring, it might not because I still find it boring and I might not want to do it. But if it's a if it's a situation where I just can't decide where to start, having someone make that decision for you can be like, I'm excited by it. I just don't know what thing to do first. That can be helpful. um I can also trigger like a really weird thing where sometimes you can't decide between two restaurants or two whatever it happens to be. And then you'll ask someone else, like what do you want to do? And they'll tell you. And then you're instantly like, oh, no, I don't want that. And then you know that the other one was the one you actually want. yeah Having someone put a stake in the ground is what you need to know what you actually wanted. like Sometimes even even having someone ah share an opinion
01:04:00
Speaker
like that can could you tell you decide oh you know this is what i actually want to do first yeah sometimes i flip a coin just to see if i disagree with the result yes yeah that'll that's a valuable strategy too um uh if you're familiar with rubber ducking um yeah uh that can be a really helpful strategy for ADHD folks to just literally just say it out loud um for those who don't know rubber ducking is this thing where like you'll you'll describe a coding problem to a like a literal rubber duck and in the process of saying it out loud helps you make sense of it in a way that just internalizing it does not. I find it's more helpful to rubber duck with an actual like real human who can respond back to you. um But if you don't have one of those, a rubber duck can help. I am notoriously anti AI, but
01:04:48
Speaker
I could see how throwing a question into the chat GBT void and getting response back could be helpful for a certain type of person. um Weirdly, the very first company I worked at had a life-size cardboard cutout of Han Solo.
01:05:03
Speaker
And I found it useful explaining it to Han Solo. So for several years, I knew this is the Han Solo-ing technique. I love it. That's awesome. That's amazing. um Yeah, so that that can be helpful too. But yeah, Chris, that's a great, as a manager,
01:05:19
Speaker
if you see an employee floundering like that. The tough thing is in a in know ADHD folks often thrive in remote work environments because there's fewer disruptions. And in a remote work environment, you might not always see that happening the way you would with. um And you also don't necessarily want to be the micromanagy, hey, how's it going? Hey, how's it going? And even if you are doing that,
01:05:46
Speaker
an ADHD or who's in that space where they're struggling might not feel comfortable saying, I'm struggling. They might lie to you and say, it's going fine. And inside they're like, I gotta to get this done. I gotta get this done. I gotta get like deep existential panic, but they have all these internalized feelings of like, if I admit that I'm not doing well, that's going to put me in all sorts of like,
01:06:13
Speaker
i'm going to get put on ah like a performance improvement plan i'm goingnna get fired i'm gonna you know so they they might not tell you so danger spirally there is the danger of of spiraling and there's also just the big i don't know how to I don't know how to necessarily necessarily ah address this other than modeling the behavior itself as ah as a manager where you admit when you're struggling with things and you're just creating a culture where it's okay to say that. yeah But yeah a lot of corporate culture, this is a much bigger topic than just ADHD, but a lot of corporate culture incentivizes
01:06:53
Speaker
Pretending things are great even when they're not. and um and And like if you're a manager, you will often inherit employees, neurodivergent or not, that have a lot of trauma around that and will lie to you and tell you that things are good when they're not because admitting that things are not good is the path to getting fired or demoted or not getting that.
01:07:19
Speaker
that raise and um and ah you know it creates a lot of organizational dysfunction. um That's certainly bigger than like any one manager can fix, but within your own team,
01:07:31
Speaker
you can create a culture of healing where people feel more comfortable admitting their vulnerabilities. And I think a lot of that starts with doing it yourself. Um, yeah leading by example. Yeah. Versus just expecting employees to be honest with you, because given the power dynamics, I just, I don't think, I don't think that's likely to happen very often, especially as a manager. If you're covering up your own insecurities, that will sort of guarantee that no one else will be vulnerable. Right.
01:07:58
Speaker
Yeah, and I i will admit the the managers where I have felt most comfortable saying when I'm struggling are the ones who have told, like when they'd have like team meetings or whatever, have been very open about the fact that like, we just got this mandate from above, I think it sucks and here's why. Or like, this is gonna be really, odd like we're gonna struggle with this.
01:08:27
Speaker
ah We have to do it anyways, but you know like just having that versus like the the ones who are just like they always tow the company line there Yeah, yes, man. Yes women. Yes people um ah Those those are the kinds of folks that I've always felt like they're playing a ah corporate political game I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell them what's what because I know I know where that's gonna that's gonna lead me whereas the the ones who have been willing to be more vulnerable and like I know we're not going to like this, but we have to get it done. Or I've been trying to push back on this. I don't think it's going to work. I hope it does. I'll let you know how it plays out. I have then felt more comfortable being more vulnerable myself, more honest with those managers.
01:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. That sounds like a much more sustainable strategy too than the management by denial approach. Of course, those managers are putting themselves, like they're putting their necks on the chopping block by doing that. But, you know. Which probably relates to how their managers are managing them all the way up to the CEO, right? Yeah. Right. This could get into a very dangerous analysis of corporate life and corporate in America, I feel. So let's switch tax light. Yes, that's true.
01:09:38
Speaker
Um, so one thing I was going to ask you, um, I hope it was, I hope I'm okay asking you this, but, um,
01:09:47
Speaker
but without wishing to look for a quick fix is is it like medication. Have you, have you ever tried very happy to talk about this? Yeah. So, um, yeah, no, this is an awesome, an awesome avenue of discussion because I i appreciate the,
01:10:04
Speaker
I appreciate the way you couch the question because I think it opens up. opens up an interesting aspect of medication that is worth exploring. So, um, obviously standard caveat here. I'm not a doctor. Um, a lot of ADHD medications are stimulant based and highly, highly regulated in a lot of countries because if you don't need them, uh, they can have a whole bunch of adverse side effects. Even if you do need them, they can have some interesting side effects because they're stimulants. So yeah playing with dopamine is generally a high risk strategy, you know, it' so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, yeah um,
01:10:39
Speaker
uh, there is depending on where you live, when you were born, how you were raised, there is often a huge stigma around medication in general for solving cognitive issues. Uh, solving is not the right word for addressing, treating, managing, um, and within the ADHD space in particular, even more so. Um, and, um, uh,
01:11:07
Speaker
I think one thing I want to get out just write right ah right up front is that ADHD medication can't fix ADHD, nor do I personally believe that that is even an ideal gold ah goal rather. So i um I am extremely ADHD positive in that i I think my ADHD creates a lot of really really interesting, I'll call them, challenges in in work, in life. But it also um and also gives me some some abilities that I think a lot of neurotypical folks don't have, or like I am able to do, easily do things that neurotypical folks often find hard. And um but jazz so,
01:12:00
Speaker
One of the things I've i learned later in life is that a lot of neurotypical folks struggle to come up with ideas. And I have – not universally, right? No dig such thing as a monolith. But um I meet a lot of neurotypical folks who um struggle with creative thinking or they tend to listen to that little voice in their head that says, well, that would never work here. What happens if you know they they immediately go into like risk analysis around things? Whereas because my brain is like a lottery machine that has a million ideas bouncing around and smashing into each other all the time, I have a tendency to notice
01:12:44
Speaker
weird like intersections and overlaps between what seem disparate or unrelated things more frequently than a lot of my neurotypical friends and peers do. Again, not universally. I'm not saying all neurotypical folks are uncreative, but I am more likely to be creative. I have more ideas than I can use in a lifetime. like I have this massive list of things that I've thought of that 98% of them will never even, I'll never even explore them. There's just way too many of them. um And when I do decide to lean into one of these,
01:13:14
Speaker
um many ADHD folks lack impulse control. And so my brain skips the step that goes, what if this fails? the What if you look like an idiot? What if this blows up in your face? What if this bad thing happens? And that can absolutely become a liability in certain contexts. But it also means that ADHD folks are a lot more likely to um take healthy risks, ah go down innovative paths, and ah and i don't explore things that someone would normally dismiss out of hand. um So I feel very ADHD positive. I think there's a lot of great things about it that if you can capitalize on them, they can really help you thrive professionally. But um there are absolutely some challenges with ADHD and
01:14:01
Speaker
I view medication as for me personally as a really ah appropriate tool for helping you so much in the same way that um so I like there's two analogies I like for this that work for different reasons so um one of them is medication doesn't fix your ADHD, it helps you regulate your ADHD the way you want. So if you're familiar with the X-Men comic series, Cyclops has laser death eyes, right? And if he doesn't wear his glasses or his goggles, depending on whether he's in incognito or costume mode, every time he opens his eyes, he lasers people and kills them,
Managing ADHD: Medication and Alternatives
01:14:46
Speaker
right? Like he will slice you in half and you'll be dead.
01:14:48
Speaker
But he put just, sweaty man and you can't control it. But when he wears his goggles or his Ruby eyeglasses, if he's, you know, he's in just street clothes, um, suddenly he can, he can control it. He still has his laser laser death eyes, but he can turn them on and off when he wants. He can point them in the direction he wants them to go in. He can harness them as a superpower and I have found that for me and for a lot of my ADHD peers who take medication, it works like that. It doesn't make my ADHD go away. It's still there. I just have the ability to shift it in the directions I want a little bit more easily. So that task shifting thing I talked about being really difficult to do.
01:15:32
Speaker
um We're like, oh no, I've hyper focused on the wrong thing and now I can't turn it off. I have more of an ability to stop it and turn it in the direction I want to. Those boring tasks, a little bit easier to get moving on. um So it's really helpful there. um the other The other thing here is... um There's ah there's this this stigma around like, so you'll either, you'll run into, I guess, a couple of camps. One of them is people like me who are really ADHD positive. And they're like, I don't need medication to fix me. And, ah or they view it as like a crutch, right? um And especially if you're in a non-US country, I find sometimes there's this like, oh, Americans just throw medication at everything. Like you don't need that.
01:16:18
Speaker
um But we don't talk the same way about people who need eyeglasses. I'm wearing contacts right now, but like I can read words without my glasses, um've got a um but to hold them like this to my face so that I can see them because they look really fuzzy otherwise. And no one's like, oh, you wear glasses so that you can so you can see things? You don't need to fix it. you know like We don't talk about it that way. We don't talk about it that way with like,
01:16:50
Speaker
people who need a wheelchair because their legs don't work the same, right? Like we don't, we don't have that same level of like, you don't need your wheelchair. Just, just crawl, just, you know, use, use a, can like, you know, if you need, I mean, the awkward thing is you go back far enough in history and you can find cases of that's shit treating people that way. Humans, humans have a long history of being awful. So like, but, um, uh, the, the other,
01:17:18
Speaker
way this pendulum swings is we, Chris, you and I grew up during an era where the only treatment for ADHD for a long time was Ritalin, which has a really, ah again, not a doctor, but the, the release profile on Ritalin is all at once and then wears off fast.
01:17:41
Speaker
and um Release profile by which you mean how quickly the drug goes into the bloodstream. Yeah, how the medication hits your body. Release and profile are two hot words in a textbook. I'm so sorry. The medication will dump into your bloodstream all at once.
01:17:56
Speaker
And then it wears off really fast. And so, especially in the 80s, early 90s, when they were like trying to dial in doses and stuff, you would see a lot of kids who were previously very energetic turn into effectively walking zombies.
01:18:12
Speaker
and And then they'd start to get hyper again. And then they'd go to the nurses office after lunch and they'd come back and they'd be zombies again. And so for a lot of folks who grew up seeing that there's this notion that ADHD medication will change you. It'll change your personality. It'll make you this like boring, zombified version of yourself. And if you are given too much of it and if you're given too much of certain medications, that absolutely can happen. But the way,
01:18:42
Speaker
they um tend to approach ADHD medication these days is a lot different where um ah most doctors will start you on a comically small child size dose of whatever medication they have decided is the right fit for you and then gradually work your way up until you find a dose that works really well and then you'll know like yeah i'm I'm talking like I i i so I'm actually currently on a dose that is smaller than what a lot of children are prescribed and is working really well for me. okay And um my doctor had me increase it by 50%, which seems like a lot, but like I'm on five milligrams. I increased it by 2.5 to 7.5. Many adults I know are on like 20, 30 milligrams of Adderall, but I'm on way less than that. And I have found that like if i if I take two of them, if I went up to 10,
01:19:38
Speaker
Um, I, I feel awful. Like, you know, instantly. And the nice thing about most of these medications is it's not the kind of thing where like you have to wait for it to see how it works. Like it's, it's in snack, not instant acting, but like it's, it's, you take it for that day. How you feel that day is how you will feel that day only. And then it will wear off and then you reset the next day and you can just, yeah so most, most of the time the protocol is you keep gradually working up.
01:20:05
Speaker
until you find a dose that doesn't feel right. And then the second it doesn't feel right, you dial it back and you don't ever have to feel that way again. Um, and, um, the medications, there's a much wider range of options now. So, um, if you were on a stimulant based medication like Ritalin is, uh, they have, they have a lot of medications that even the shorter releasing ones will release the medication over a longer period of time. So you're not getting that like,
01:20:34
Speaker
everything and then crash kind of effect. They have extended release ones that will release a more steady amount of medication over the course of the day instead of, you know, like I have it in the morning and then it wears off in the afternoon. So you have a lot of options there. And there are a lot of non stimulant options now as well. So um generally speaking, the stimulant medications focus on making your brain make more dopamine and the non stimulants focus on keeping the dopamine your brain makes in your brain for longer um so that it doesn't go away as fast. That's not universally true. Some non-stimulants encourage dopamine production as well, um but many of them are what's what are called uptake inhibitors. um And some people even take both in conjunction where you take a medication to make your brain make a little bit more, and then you take a medication to keep what you do make
01:21:27
Speaker
floating around a little bit longer, which can reduce some of the most non stimulants have far fewer side effects than the stimulant based ones. So you'll often see people use them in conjunction to reduce some of that. um And then obviously the other thing worth mentioning here is um because everybody's brain chemistry is a little bit different.
01:21:49
Speaker
What worked for me might not work for you or someone else. like i have I have friends who tried the stimulants and it did nothing for them. They went to non-stimulant and worked great. I have a friend who took a non-stimulant and it made her incredibly nauseous. And then she switched to Adderall and it worked fantastically and she's had no side effects. And like guys say I said, I am on five milligrams of Adderall. I have friends who are on 30 or 40, which is like six, eight times more than I'm on um for a very similar kind of effect.
01:22:19
Speaker
yeah so um yeah's i'm i'm ah I'm wary of turning this into a pharmacology podcast, but I have to ask, because I'm curious. That's my job. Do you like do you ever like go on vacation and forget your pills?
01:22:35
Speaker
unlike do do you like have days where you haven't taken it and you crash, and what's that feel like? so i i have been my the The most essential tool in my ADHD toolkit is my Apple Watch, which reminds me every single day to take my medication. It reminds me of a whole bunch of other things too, but like that's a big part of it. So I haven't missed a day. And i when I go on vacation, i have I have checklists for everything because I know I will forget stuff because of my working memory. So one of the big things on there is grab your grab your medication. right And my like my wife even like reviews my list to make sure I didn't forget anything. um you We've got that that peer accountability there. But
01:23:21
Speaker
I'm on Adderall, and as a regulated substance, um the US government in particular tells manufacturers how much of it they can make and when. So we are at the time of year where it is actually getting harder to to get. And so um ah there can be periods where I have a prescription for it, but I can't find a pharmacy that can fill it because they haven't gotten a shipment in. And um and ah and i have um I have friends who have had um You know, i've I've had really bad situations around that as well. So I guess the other thing that's worth mentioning here, to actually answer your question, my
01:24:02
Speaker
My dose is low enough and my ADHD, like I have built enough systems around it that if I didn't take it, I actually think I did have a day a couple of weeks ago where I did forget to take it. Now that I'm thinking about it. But what happened for for me, the way my ADHD manifests, I will be a lot more squirrel, you know, like the the classic than I would be on it um where I'm bouncing around a lot more. um I'm going to struggle to get a lot more stuff done. um And that's a day where I'll probably have to do the like doesn't involve a lot of brainpower kind of tasks versus or I'll get just sucked into a YouTube rabbit hole and watch YouTube for three hours instead of doing work. Yeah. Again, we're back into things I can immediately relate.
01:24:51
Speaker
but um ah But because I am on a stimulant, it is only for that day. So if I take it the next day, just back to normal. um I have some friends whose ADHD symptoms are ah ah you know some of those some of those those symptoms affect them to a much greater degree. And um they i'd like i I have at least one friend who who has told me that they feel like they can't function without their Adderall because they're so all over the map that even doing things like brushing my teeth and getting dressed for the day can be challenging for them. yeah um and And so for them, it's a much bigger deal if they don't.
01:25:35
Speaker
get their medication for the day. um The other aspect of this is the non stimulant medications do not have that instant effect. So they take up to two weeks to to build up in your brain. And then their effect is more just kind of steady state you know, like persistent, whereas, um you know, with with Adderall and other stimulants, you tend to get more of like a wave of of of effect. um And so if you skipped it for a day,
01:26:08
Speaker
you probably wouldn't notice at all. um If you skipped it for a week, you'd probably start to notice like a taper off of of efficacy. um ah I'm not on an arm stimulant and I've never stopped taking my medication for that long, so I can't can't say that for certain. But um ah but yeah, so it's it's one of those things where, again, it just really varies.
01:26:32
Speaker
person to person and experience to experience. I also know some folks who have like been on it, used it for a while, had to wean themselves off. um like For example, ah if you're on a stimulant-based ADHD medication and you get pregnant, you can't keep taking it because it can be bad for fetal development. so um ah you're just You're kind of forced to go off it, which, depending on whether you were planning to be pregnant and you had the opportunity to to like taper yourself off or you're suddenly pregnant and you need to just cut it off instantly, the way your brain responds to that is probably going to be a little bit different. That sounds very difficult. Yeah. OK.
ADHD Subtypes and Diagnosis
01:27:16
Speaker
um So I think I've got one more big topic of questioning I want to pursue with you. And this, again, is a little bit delicate, but you've you've mentioned um children in the 80s and 90s with their parents giving them Ritalin. We've also talked a lot about managing people and co-working and empathising with the symptoms that you've described.
01:27:39
Speaker
Where, where do we stand on someone getting to the end of this discussion and thinking, maybe I should nudge Dave towards getting a diagnosis. yeah absolutely I think maybe Dave needs that kind of help. So yeah. And so there's one, one thing we didn't touch on that's kind of related to this, right? Is, um, and I get, I'm not, I'm not saying I'm not saying Dave has it. I know you've mentioned a couple of things, Chris, where you've been like the whole like the med student thing where it's like, should I get evaluated for ADHD? Right. So ADHD comes in. So within ADHD, they recognize currently three different subtypes of ADHD. So um one of them is um
01:28:29
Speaker
i inattentive, so easily distracted, difficulty concentrating. ah The other is hyperactive or impulsive, which does exactly what it says on the label. um And then the third subtype is combined, where you have you have both of those things. um And the inattentive is what they would have called ADD back when we were kids. um Now it's all ADHD, and it's got these these three different flavors. um And the hyperactive or combined subtypes I tend to make up a bulk of the diagnosis because they're very obvious right you. You see someone who's really hyperactive like more hyperactive than most folks at their like age are and. like oh Seems off let it go get them diagnosed the inattentive or distracted folks who don't have the hyperactivity.
01:29:24
Speaker
tend to be wildly underdiagnosed as kids. um They're often like, oh, gifted but aloof, doesn't try hard enough. um like Even as adults, right like oh you're just where you're really spacey. ah For a long time, the saying was that women tend to be more inattentive subtype.
01:29:43
Speaker
And as a result, women are often underdiagnosed. But I have talked to a phenomenal number of men in the last year or so who were recently diagnosed with the inattentive subtype. um And i so I'm of the belief that just as a subtype, it is massively underdiagnosed because it's not as obvious. um So if you think you're hearing this discussion and you think you might have ADHD,
01:30:08
Speaker
um one of the ah there's There's a couple of different avenues you can you can pursue. So um one of them is a self-diagnosis. And I think for a lot of folks, even if you want like a real diagnosis, I think it's a great first step. um So if you go to adhdforthewind.com slash developer voices,
01:30:29
Speaker
um One of the, I have a whole bunch of resources related to all the stuff we've talked about today, Chris. And one of the one of the the first items there under articles is do I have ADHD? And it links to two self-assessment tests you can take. ah One of them is just the general one, and that's oriented around hyperactive and combined subtype. The other one is one that's labeled for women.
01:30:56
Speaker
But I really, the reason it's called for women is because it's biased towards the inattentive subtype. And, uh, I think for a lot of men with out the hyperactivity, you might relate to that one more as well. So I'd recommend everybody take both, but it asks you just a short number of questions, similar to the ones that you would get on an official ADHD, uh, diagnostic assessment. And it does all the math for you and spits out like a,
01:31:25
Speaker
like a number that says you might have it, you probably have it, or it doesn't seem like you do. It's not an official diagnosis, but for a lot of folks, it can be enough, especially if you get the like, yeah, dude, you you you probably have this. That can be enough for you to start exploring, okay, let me look into some of the traits, some of the things that someone who has the traits and ADHD, not just neuro typicalness, might do to manage those. And you can start to come up with strategies and approaches and just learn more about yourself. That can often be enough for some people. That can even be enough for you to ask for accommodations at work. um You can either say like, I, ah you know, I,
01:32:08
Speaker
I have ADHD or I think I have ADHD. These things would help me work more effectively. You can even not mention ADHD at all and say you know I've been learning more about how I work and I think i think getting these things would help me work more effectively. and If you're curious what those things are, I also have a whole article on accommodations that you can ask for at work.
01:32:26
Speaker
whether you have an official diagnosis or not, accommodations you can give yourself to work more effectively. And those are part of that. I will link to those in the show notes. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Those are at the adhdforthewind.com slash developer voices page as well. Thank you for giving me my own URI.
01:32:44
Speaker
You're you're very welcome. Yeah, I will. um I loaded up with all all the things we've talked about. um The other um the other piece of this, though, is that if you if you think you might benefit from medication um or you really just you want that official diagnosis, because a lot of times things that seem like ADHD are other things could be autism. The Venn diagram between autism and ADHD is Not a circle, but it's pretty damn close. like There's a lot of overlap. Yeah, I believe that. I have an autistic relative and some of this stuff is reminding me. Yeah, yeah oh and OCD has a huge overlap. Sometimes they're comorbid, so you will have ADHD and autism, and you will have the same sets of symptoms or traits, but um
01:33:36
Speaker
Whether they're manifesting is more autism e or more adhd will like vary by day or moment and some autism traits will conflict with the adhd gets really messy and fun and and weird um and i have a whole thing on like.
01:33:51
Speaker
what if you have both ah that I will make sure I drop into this list of articles as well um because there's some great resources on that too. But talking to a um not just a doctor, a lot of times your primary care will diagnose you, but ah for a really good diagnosis, it's like a neuropsychologist or a psychiatrist is usually your best bet. um And they can also, if they think it's appropriate or if you're interested in it,
01:34:16
Speaker
prescribe you medication if that's something that you think you'd like to pursue or that you think might help. um And so i i when I talk to people, I recommend ah like right now, go make an appointment with either your doctor or a psychiatrist in a lot of countries that can take a long time. So while you're waiting,
01:34:40
Speaker
do a self-assessment and see what turns out and start learning more about ah about yourself and how your brain works. um you know it Obviously, if it says, hey, you probably don't have it, you can go talk to someone anyways, could be something else. But um if it says, like yeah, you probably have ADHD, it's a great time to just start digging into what are the traits, which ones do I feel like That's identified me and and what sorts of things can I do to, i you know, I say manage them better, but it's more than just that.
01:35:10
Speaker
it's not just how do I make the the more problematic aspects of ADHD go away? It's how do I take the the strength that it gives me and like really lean into those hard and start to do more of those? um Because that's where you go from like um ADHD is making it hard for me to ADHD has become like my professional
Leveraging ADHD for Growth and Success
01:35:31
Speaker
advantage. This is a thing I can use to really like have the best life and thrive and and just like live the kind of life I want to live. um Yeah, yeah.
01:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, because um whether we're talking about ADHD or just being anyone, right, it's understanding yourself is often one of the first steps to making the most of your strengths.
01:35:52
Speaker
Absolutely. And if you find you don't have ADHD, but you know you still have some of these traits, that's great too. like learn like Learn more about them and dig into like what sorts of things can you do to um to to capitalize on them. right like ah the the other like that We talked about even Dave, or Chris, rather sorry, you put that Dave name in my head. now so I always say Dave when I'm thinking of a random person. I feel sorry for the Dave's out there who I'm singling out unnecessarily. That's Josh for me. Josh is my go to like generic generic white guy name. But um ah if like we you, you mentioned a couple of times the whole like, like i boring tasks are really difficult, right? So like, I think a lot of folks feel like that.
01:36:36
Speaker
just as a general piece of advice, whether you have ADHD or not, finding the kind of work that you don't find boring, like just figuring out what that is for you and doing more of that.
01:36:48
Speaker
like You're going to be a lot more successful than if you constantly find yourselves in roles where you find the work you're doing boring. right like you can You can do it. You might want to do it because it's boring, but it pays well or gives you the kind of lifestyle you otherwise want. But um you know if you can find something that you don't find boring and you do better work, like that can be a lot more enjoyable of a way to spend your time. yeah um That's a discussion I want to have with my children. Once they're old enough, I don't have to say, I know it's boring, but you have to do this anyway.
01:37:17
Speaker
ah right On which note, i think I think I'm going to go and take that quiz probably out of curiosity and empathy, but we'll never know when it might turn up.
Closing Thoughts and Personal Reflections
01:37:26
Speaker
i'll be good i'll be if you If you feel comfortable sharing, Chris, i'd love to I'd love to know how it turns out for you at some point. I'll share it with you. I might not broadcast it. How about that? No worries at all. Chris, thank you very much. That was an unusual topic for us, but a really interesting one. Thank you. yeah no Thank you so much for um for having me on on the show. and just you know If anybody's listening to this, and ah You, you have questions. You, you feel uncertain. You just, you need to, whatever it is, you want to dig deeper into something, please. Like my, my website has all of my contact info. I am, as you've probably gathered from this show, an open book. So feel free to reach out and and I'd be happy to chat and be part of that journey with you. so We'll put this contact details on the show notes. christpher manley Thank you.
01:38:10
Speaker
Thank you, Chris. And I'll tell you, I did take that test. I got nowhere near the diagnostic score. So whatever the explanation for me is, medical science and my wife will have to keep searching. If you're interested in taking that test, links in the show notes. And while you're looking for those links, since this is an unusual episode, let me know what you thought about it in the comments. Should we keep throwing the net wider than straight tech or should we stick to straight tech in the future? I would be interested in your opinion.
01:38:40
Speaker
Certainly, if you've enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like it, rate it, share it with a friend, maybe share it on Blue Sky. Everyone seems to be moving to Blue Sky this month. um I'm there now, so if you want to find me, again, link in the show notes. Until next time, I've been your host, Chris Jenkins. This has been Developer Voices with Chris Ferdinandi. Thanks for listening.