As a developer with ADHD, I have a few insights into the skill of attention-management.
1) Shifting into undivided attention isn't the only skill you want. You also want the skill of knowing when you should divert your attention. Otherwise, you end up going down a rabbit hole before you realized that you've been focusing on the wrong thing for a while. If you get stuck, it can be very useful to take some time away from the keyboard and let some other ideas float in and out of your working memory.
2) A key question to answer is "What should I focus on?" One thing that can make this much easier is if you have a way to find out from your team:
- Why does our team exist?
- Who are our stakeholders?
- What are our goals? Why do they help our stakeholders?
Getting this information can be quite difficult, depending on your company culture.
If you are feeling distracted while writing an essay, see if you can imagine that someone asked you a question on reddit.
3) Another useful question to answer is "What does better look like?" for any given task. Essentially, jot down a leading-KPIs for the next couple hours...or next minutes! This is one reason why writing automated tests is useful, even if they are only mental scaffolding that you refactor away before committing.
For writing, it can be helpful to do "question-driven drafting" where you write your first draft as a dialogue between someone who is confused and someone who understands. That lets you look at your explanations and treat "does this seem like a good answer to the question I just wrote?" as your leading-KPI to shoot for.
4) One thing that can impede deep work is when you intuitively suspect that your pursuit of your current goal puts other things you value at risk. This tempts you to keep checking on that thing, forcing you to shift attention. One approach to that is to tell yourself "don't worry about it." I've rarely found that approach valuable -- indeed, the knowledge that I'm just not handling a risk I'm responsible for makes me more tempted to check on it. I've found it much more valuable to set up something which would detect the risk for me and could shift my attention at that point. This is another reason why automated tests are useful.
But you can also just have a checklist that you add to as you go along and check at the end.
"why does our team exist" is a rabbit hole for me. It goes to "why does our company exist" to "why does this industry exist" and "what am i doing with my life" and why does any of this matter".
1) Shifting into undivided attention isn't the only skill you want. You also want the skill of knowing when you should divert your attention. Otherwise, you end up going down a rabbit hole before you realized that you've been focusing on the wrong thing for a while. If you get stuck, it can be very useful to take some time away from the keyboard and let some other ideas float in and out of your working memory.
2) A key question to answer is "What should I focus on?" One thing that can make this much easier is if you have a way to find out from your team:
- Why does our team exist?
- Who are our stakeholders?
- What are our goals? Why do they help our stakeholders?
Getting this information can be quite difficult, depending on your company culture.
If you are feeling distracted while writing an essay, see if you can imagine that someone asked you a question on reddit.
3) Another useful question to answer is "What does better look like?" for any given task. Essentially, jot down a leading-KPIs for the next couple hours...or next minutes! This is one reason why writing automated tests is useful, even if they are only mental scaffolding that you refactor away before committing.
For writing, it can be helpful to do "question-driven drafting" where you write your first draft as a dialogue between someone who is confused and someone who understands. That lets you look at your explanations and treat "does this seem like a good answer to the question I just wrote?" as your leading-KPI to shoot for.
4) One thing that can impede deep work is when you intuitively suspect that your pursuit of your current goal puts other things you value at risk. This tempts you to keep checking on that thing, forcing you to shift attention. One approach to that is to tell yourself "don't worry about it." I've rarely found that approach valuable -- indeed, the knowledge that I'm just not handling a risk I'm responsible for makes me more tempted to check on it. I've found it much more valuable to set up something which would detect the risk for me and could shift my attention at that point. This is another reason why automated tests are useful.
But you can also just have a checklist that you add to as you go along and check at the end.